The big-name financiers bankrolling livestock corporations and climate change – a 2024 update. In this report, we map global financial flows to the world’s 55 largest livestock corporations between 2015-2022 – and make the case for why banks and investors should stop financing these destructive and polluting companies.

Interested in digging deeper? Download the underlying dataset. We invite journalists, campaigners and activists to use this data to expose the flows of finance to big livestock companies – compiled through meticulous research by the Dutch not-for-profit Profundo from a range of financial databases, we’ve made this dataset public to help hold the financial backers of big livestock to account.

How the Norwegian salmon industry extracts nutrition and undermines livelihoods in West Africa

The role of UK banks in financing industrial meat and dairy corporations. The UK’s ‘Big Six’ banks – Barclays, HSBC, Santander, Lloyds, NatWest, Standard Chartered – provided £62 billion in financing to the world’s largest meat, dairy and feed producers between 2015-2022.

New report by Feedback Europe finds that high EU biomethane target is unrealistic and unsustainable: as European reform of gas markets is underway, our analysis debunks the assumptions behind the high EU biomethane target and calls for a much lower target that is fit for food and the climate.

UK supply of sugar is over 2.5 times the maximum safe limit for consumption. Feedback and Action on Sugar’s research reveals the harmful impacts on public health and the environment of producing, importing and consuming too much sugar in the UK. The report exposes how current agricultural and trade policies which support or aim to increase the UK’s supply of sugar undermine efforts to meet climate, environmental and public health goals.

You can view a summary of the report here.

Our Supermarket Meat and Climate Scorecard Report 2023 finds that greenwash
is rife across the UK supermarket sector, and exposes the ways in which the 10 largest
supermarkets are ‘greenwashing’ their climate footprint.

Alternative proteins are on the rise. To get a clearer picture of what this could mean for current and future food systems, this discussion brief puts forth five critical questions for policymakers, producers, and retailers to consider on the role of alternative proteins in the dietary transition in Europe.

To support the goals of the Paris Agreement—including “increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production”—all public development banks must confront the necessity of reducing, not increasing, industrial livestock production

Barclays bank, a household name in the UK with over 48 million customers worldwide, is the bank of choice for one of the world’s most destructive companies – the biggest global meat corporation, JBS. However, Barclays continues to provide billions of dollars’ worth of loans and underwriting services to JBS – the Brazilian meat giant infamous for its environmental and financial crimes.

We urge the European Commission to set a legally binding target of a 50%, farm-to-fork reduction in food waste by 2030 and recommend that policymakers, organisations, and individuals join us in calling for these targets to be adopted.

The UK’s local councils are pouring £238 million in pension fund money into industrial livestock investments, fuelling a destructive industry which causes climate change, deforestation, human rights abuses and industrial-scale animal cruelty.

This report explores the role of Dutch supermarkets in addressing the country’s climate footprint by taking responsibility for the environmental impact of their high meat and dairy sales.

The report is in Dutch, a summary in English is available here.

We contributed to Changing Markets report on methane. Climate scientists have confirmed that a focus on methane emissions – in addition to measures designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions – will be crucial in determining whether global heating can be kept below 1.5°C.  Although the livestock sector is by far the largest contributor of human-induced methane emissions, the report reveals that both the biggest meat and dairy-producing countries – with some of the highest methane emissions – and the largest meat and dairy corporations are oblivious to the problem.

Feedback’s annual report 2019-2020 covers Feedback’s work in an unprecedent year, the pandemic brought to the fore many vulnerabilities of the food system, including reliance on global supply chains, the concentration of the groceries market, persistent food insecurity and health inequalities due to nutrition. This created a public space for many of our issues, and our advocacy, media and programmatic work to make food and justice central to the food economy became prominent this year.

UK supermarkets control over 90% of the UK groceries market share and for many people, going to the supermarket is the only option for buying food. Supermarkets therefore have a responsibilty to ensure the food they sell isn’t hurting the planet, including meat and dairy. With this scorecard, Feedback set out to assess the top 10 UK supermarkets on their work to address the climate crisis by reducing the environmental impact of the meat and dairy they sell. See how well your supermarket scored.

The UK prides itself on being a world leader on climate action, and in particular deforestation. New legislative proposals from the UK government plan to introduce a due diligence obligation on companies trading in forest risk commodities – but exempts the financial sector which finances this trade. This report analyses sample investments held by the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund (PCPF) and reveals that Members of Parliament hold pensions investments in a fund holding US$67m in stock from companies among the top 35 largest global meat and dairy companies. The fund includes shares of JBS, one of the biggest meat producers in the world whose business practices have been repeatedly linked to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado region. These investments demonstrate why regulation is needed: MPs who strongly support an end to U.K. complicity in global deforestation will go on the record while, unknowingly, paying their own money into a fund that backs some of the worst offenders in forest destruction. Domestic legislation on deforestation which fails to address one of the most integral parts of the supply chain, finance, leaves gaping loopholes. Incorporating a due diligence obligation on finance sector organisations would close many of these gaps.

As countries and companies commit to net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) targets of varying ambition, anaerobic digestion (AD) has been framed as an environmental silver bullet, a form of renewable energy to rival wind and solar in its desirability and environmental credentials. AD is the process of taking organic materials, known as ‘feedstocks’, both purpose-grown, like maize and other crops, and waste streams, like food waste and manure, and breaking them down using micro-organisms in the absence of air. To date, the AD industry’s claims have largely gone unchallenged. However, by comparing the AD industry’s ideal scenario – one that maximises growth and draws the greatest subsidies – with a scenario in which policy decisions maximise proven climate change mitigation policies, this report shows that the benefits of AD have been overstated. Worse, the industry’s ambitions may be crowding out better environmental alternatives. This report uses the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) conducted in collaboration with researchers at Bangor University to shed some much-needed light on the limitations of AD, and show what role there is (and is not) for AD in a sustainable future.

See also: Executive Summary, Appendices and Life Cycle Assessment study

Meat and dairy are a climate issue. But from the scale of investments made by the biggest global financial institutions, all with high-level and public commitments to sustainability, you wouldn’t know it. Between 2015 and 2020, global meat and dairy companies received over $478 billion in backing by over 2,500 investment firms, banks, and pension funds headquartered around the globe. In this report, Feedback exposes the sheer scale of the global financial fodder behind meat and dairy corporations and reveals how high street banks, global investors and pension funds are bankrolling destructive livestock corporations.

Feedback’s annual report 2018-2019 covers a key year in Feedback’s journey: a year of new areas of work in the ever-more urgent context of powerful interests shaping a food system that is driving climate breakdown. Find out more and download the report.

The NHS recommends that we eat two portions of fish a week: seafood is a good source of vital micronutrients like omega 3. But with wild fish populations are under severe stress, the Scottish salmon industry frames itself as part of the solution – a source of healthy, omega 3-rich fish, without increasing demand for wild fish. The reality is not so simple: Scottish farmed salmon’s high levels of omega 3 are the result of feeding salmon with fish oil made from hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wild fish each year. This report, taking the Scottish farmed salmon industry as a case study, explores how we could meet our micronutrient needs from fish, while posing a minimal burden on our oceans. Using nutritional modelling, we show that by directly consuming a wide variety of small, oily fish, commonly used for salmon feed, we could access the same level of micronutrients as through current levels of farmed salmon consumption, while avoiding the capture of 59% of fish currently used in Scottish salmon feed. This report reframes the debate on fish consumption to show that flexible, diverse fish diets are possible while protecting the long-term health of our oceans.

Every year, the Scottish farmed salmon industry uses around 460,000 tonnes of wild fish to feed its salmon. But where does this wild fish come from, and are the measures in place to try to minimise the environmental and social risk of catching fish to feed farmed fish working? In this report, Feeback takes a deep dive into the sourcing practices of the Scottish farmed salmon industry, to explore the role of ‘reduction fisheries’ in feeding our global appetite for farmed salmon. We look closely at the role of certification schemes in protecting our seas from over-fishing to feed growing demand for salmon feed ingredients, and conclude these schemes do not protect wild fish populations, or communities around the world who depend on them, from the appetite of the salmon aquaculture industry.

Building on a wealth of research about the role of industrial livestock production in climate breakdown, this report draws an analogy with another high impact industry: fossil fuel production. The report uncovers the ways in which the current business practices of meat and dairy corporations – such as Tyson, JBS, Cargill and Fonterra – are incompatible with a sustainable and just future. Using the example of emissions, the report questions whether these companies are capable of the sort of transformation needed to be compatible with a zero-carbon future. We outline the strategies for dealing with the industry, arguing that for change to occur at the pace required, there needs to be an increased campaigner and investor focus on the financing and investment that sustains this industry: Big Livestock’s financial fodder.

Building on advice from microbiologists, epidemiologists, veterinarians and pig nutritionists, the REFRESH technical guidelines on animal feed set out the key principles for producing safe feed from surplus food. To ensure safety, only omnivorous non-ruminant livestock should be allowed feed made from surplus food that may contain meat. Such feed should be sourced exclusively from specialist licensed treatment plants located off-farm and subject to stringent controls regarding heat treatment, acidification, and biosecurity to ensure the feed is free from disease. Surplus food feeds could reduce farmer feed costs, land use for European livestock farming, carbon emissions, and deforestation from soy imports. From a food security perspective, surplus food feeds provide an opportunity to decouple some of Europe’s feed supply from global agricultural commodity prices.

Adults in the UK currently consume twice their daily recommended allowance of sugar, with severe consequences for our health and to the NHS. Spending on the treatment of Type 2 Diabetes alone comes to £8.8 billion a year. Feedback calculates that at the current pace of reduction, which excludes any impact from the relatively recent Sugar Levy, it will take around 422 years for the UK population to reduce their sugar consumption to World Health Organisation recommended levels. Yet we use 115,000 acres of land to grow sugar beet, which is manufactured into refined sugar by one UK company: British Sugar. In the process, in this report we calculate that harvesting sugar beet creates around 489,000 tonnes of soil loss per year. In addition to the sugar in our tea, is it time to rethink the sugar beet in our fields?