Financing of Meat and Dairy Giants Grows Thanks to Big American Banks and Investors

The world’s biggest banks and investors are continuing to funnel billions of dollars to carbon-intensive industrial livestock companies, undermining their own pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fueling an ongoing boom in meat and milk production that threatens global climate goals.

New research finds that the world’s biggest banks, including America’s “big three”—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup—have increased their financing of the world’s largest meat and dairy companies in recent years. Since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015, the world’s top banks have extended roughly $600 billion in credit, loans and underwriting to the world’s 55 largest livestock companies, while major investors, including Blackrock, Vanguard and Capital Group, hold more than $320 billion in shares and bonds. 

The new research, from environmental and advocacy groups that track financing of climate-intensive industries, underscores a major blindspot in the banking industry’s efforts to cut emissions and eliminate climate risks from their portfolios and the broader banking system.

“Industrial livestock production causes an incredible amount of emissions,” said Monique Mikhail, who directs Friends of the Earth’s agriculture and climate finance program. “And while everyone knows that we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground … not everyone is paying attention to livestock as one of the biggest emitting sectors. It’s actually not even on every activist radar, and it definitely isn’t on the banks’.”

Estimates of the greenhouse gas emissions from livestock range from 12 percent to nearly 30 percent of total emissions, depending on the methodology, and research has shown that staying within the Paris target of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming will be impossible unless the world curbs livestock production—even if the burning of fossil fuels stopped today. 

Livestock, globally, accounts for one-third of man-made methane, roughly the same as the oil, coal and natural gas industries combined. Methane, though short-lived, has roughly 80 times the climate warming potential over a 20-year period of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas. 

“There really is broad scientific consensus now that we need urgently to reduce livestock numbers to stay within the safe limits of climate change,” said Martin Bowman, a senior policy manager for Feedback Global, a UK-based research group that focuses on food and agricultural systems. 

Feedback Global recently published a new report, “Still Butchering the Planet,” an update to a 2020 report that tracked big banks’ spending on the livestock industry. Since that report was published, Feedback Global determined that funding to the biggest livestock and dairy producers rose by 15 percent and now averages about $77 billion a year.

The new report notes that a recent survey of more than 200 climate scientists, over half of whom have authored United Nations reports on climate change, found that most agreed the world should achieve “peak livestock emissions” by 2025 and then reduce those emissions 61 percent by 2035. Nearly 80 percent of those scientists agreed that livestock numbers need to peak by 2025 and that the best way to stay below that upper limit is for developed countries to shift to less livestock-intensive diets. 

“This is really quite a steep trajectory,” Bowman said.

The United Nations projects that demand for livestock-based foods will rise 20 percent by 2050 and livestock companies have made it clear they plan to meet that demand. Already, global meat and dairy production has exploded: Roughly five times more meat was produced globally in 2021 than in the 1960s, and nearly three times more milk. Since the signing of the Paris Agreement, meat production has increased 9 percent and milk, 13 percent.

This week, Friends of the Earth and Profundo, a Netherlands-based research firm, published a related report analyzing the contributions of U.S.-based banks specifically. The report identifies the 58 American banks providing credit and loans to the world’s largest meat, dairy and feed companies, by volume, and found that between 2016 and 2023, these banks directed $134 billion in loans and underwriting to those companies. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup provided over half of that amount—$74 billion. 

Mikhail, who was the lead author of the report, noted that these banks have signed onto the Net Zero Banking Alliance and have committed to net-zero targets for agriculture. The alliance launched in April 2021, and now has 145 signatories, including the big three American banks, which all signed on that first year. 

“Many of them have publicly stated the importance of addressing emissions from food and agriculture,” she said. “Unfortunately, their bold words have not actually translated into action.”

The authors of the report employ a methodology that translates the banks’ lending into a corresponding greenhouse gas impact. Their analysis found that lending by the “Big Three” American banks to livestock companies represents a tiny fraction of their outstanding loans—just one quarter of 1 percent—but roughly 11 percent of their financed emissions.  

“Decreasing an already small proportion of their lending portfolio would reap outsize emissions reduction benefits and accelerate progress towards meeting their climate commitments,” Mikhail said.

The group is calling on the banks to halt all new financing for industrial livestock expansion, and notes that at least two banks—one Dutch, one Australian—have already done that.  

Friends of the Earth has met with Citigroup and Bank of America, and described their positions as “inquisitive.” JPMorgan Chase did not respond to the report.

Citigroup declined to comment for this story, and JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America did not respond to inquiries from Inside Climate News.

The researchers are calling for divestment from the livestock companies, rather than other methods to persuade them to curb livestock production, because so many major livestock companies are not diversified and rely largely on livestock for earnings.  

“Upwards of 95 percent of the business is livestock,” Bowman said.

Bowman noted the industry’s lobbying efforts to downplay the impact of livestock production on the climate, including attempts to water down language in a recent IPCC report.

“It’s their core business,” Bowman said. “They’re going to fight tooth and nail.”

The reports come as financial regulators are attempting to require companies of all kinds to disclose to investors the greenhouse gas emissions from their business operations. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a proposed rule in 2022 and adopted a watered-down version earlier this year that’s already facing legal challenges from the oil and gas industry.

The approved rule excludes companies from reporting emissions from their supply chains, what’s known as “Scope 3” emissions. In the case of agricultural and livestock companies, Scope 3 emissions represent the vast majority of their climate footprint.

Mikhail’s report gives the banks some leniency by noting that they may not even be aware of the carbon pollution emitted by the livestock companies they’re financing, largely because financial regulators have been unable to require full greenhouse gas disclosure. The lack of transparency obscures the climate impacts of agricultural companies because most of their emissions, usually more than 90 percent, are Scope 3 emissions. An estimated 97 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions from JBS, the world’s largest meat company, are Scope 3.

“If the companies are not reporting on Scope 3, they’re basically not reporting,” Mikhail said.

JBS is facing a lawsuit in New York that alleges the company is making fraudulent claims by vowing to reach “net zero” emissions despite its stated plans to expand. 

Earlier this month, the Humane Society of the United States and the Center for Biological Diversity asked the SEC to investigate the company’s attempts to list on the New York Stock Exchange. In a complaint filed with the SEC, the groups say JBS should be barred from the stock exchange because it has misled investors, including about its contributions to climate change and its net-zero commitments.

“They haven’t given any indication of how they plan to achieve those commitments,” said Hannah Connor, a senior attorney with the center. “So we’re operating in a vacuum.”