ABSTRACT
In 2006 the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) issued a report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, concluding that animal farming presents a “major threat to the environment” with such “deep and wide-ranging” impacts that it should rank as a leading focus for environmental policy. Unfortunately, this call for action on the environmental effects of meat eating is not more well-known because of a taboo on the discussion of the topic of meat and climate change, which this chapter refers to as meat eating denial. The term is meant as an analogy to the concept of climate change denial, i.e. the concept that large-scale businesses with specific interests in influencing public policy internationally misrepresent scientific studies, via a series of rhetorical strategies, in order to influence public opinion. Specifically, the chapter focuses on research by Dr. Frank Mitloehner as a representative example of the growing manner in which animal agribusiness has been able to utilize the strategies earlier used by climate change deniers in order to distort the debate on livestock production and its environmental effects.
