Does WWF Even Care About the Environment Anymore?
A new investigation unveils multi-million dollar ties with factory farming and efforts to advance false climate solutions — all to spare the meat industry’s image and shield it from real reform.
In a damning exposé published in Vox, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) stands accused of betraying its core mission in a textbook case of greenwashing. The investigation reveals how the conservation group has devolved into one of Big Meat’s biggest accomplices. And it’s worsening the very devastation it claims to fight.
Abetting an Ecological Crisis
For years, WWF has pocketed millions from companies committing serious ecological crimes. But WWF’s alliances with the likes of McDonald’s, Tyson Foods, and Cargill aren’t just lucrative. They represent the organization’s refusal to wake up and smell the bacon, if “the bacon” is the clear threat industrialized animal agriculture poses to our planet and our future. Factory farming is the leading cause of deforestation and a top contributor to climate change, air pollution, water pollution, and species extinction around the globe.
WWF’s hypocrisy runs deep. While it acknowledges the harm animal agriculture and aquaculture cause to wildlife and ecosystems, it doesn’t put its money (more than $600 million in assets) where its mouth is. Rather than push for meaningful reforms, WWF leverages its resources to advance false solutions and provide reputational cover for Big Meat.
In short, WWF is dropping a few buckets of water on a burning forest and helping the arsonists disguise themselves as firefighters.
On Offer from WWF: the “Moral License” to Destroy the Planet
“Greenwashing serves a lot of purposes,” University of Miami environmental science and policy professor Jennifer Jacquet explained to Vox. “It's not just about [preventing] regulation — that's always part of it. But it's about maintaining the social license to operate … the economic license, the moral license.”
If there were any question that WWF is handing Big Meat that moral license — or that factory farming should be among the group’s top priorities — the Vox investigation dispels all ambiguity with these and other facts:
Meat and dairy production account for 14.5-19.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions, putting the industry on par with road transport.
From 2017 to 2022, WWF-US received $12-28.6 million from meat, dairy, and food companies, including giants like Tyson Foods and Cargill. WWF denies this causes a conflict of interest.
WWF-US aims to reduce animal protein's environmental impact by 50% by 2030, but it can't provide details on how it’s measuring this goal or progress.
WWF promotes "regenerative" agriculture, which many climate scientists, including a former WWF lead scientist, criticize as an ineffective solution based on faulty research.
Major polluting meat and dairy companies like Tyson and Land O’Lakes have adopted some "regenerative" farming practices, moves applauded by WWF and other conservation organizations.
WWF participates in and has helped found industry "roundtables" that provide superficial sustainability recommendations without enforcement mechanisms.
These roundtables, including the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, are used by food giants and meat lobbying groups as proof of climate action, despite little tangible progress. The roundtables are part of the meat and dairy sector's broader campaign to downplay environmental impact, delay regulations, and deflect responsibility.
A former WWF lead scientist admitted that for meat companies, “the biggest benefit with partnering with these large [nonprofits] is having your name, having your logos together on the same document.”
What About Impacted Communities, WWF?
In addition to offering partnership and PR cover to the meat industry, WWF also overlooks how much factory farming directly hurts rural communities, particularly low-income communities and communities of color. As far as we can tell, WWF has little to nothing to say about environmental injustice. Yet around the world, communities affected by animal agriculture face deadly air and water pollution as well as resource depletion, like seeing their drinking wells contaminated and sucked dry by mega-dairies. WWF’s proposed “solutions,” like installing biodigesters to capture methane, would only worsen these problems for impacted communities while padding the dairy industry’s pockets.
A Legacy of Greenwashing and Enabling Human Rights Abuses
It’s also worth noting that WWF’s record of greenwashing and complicity in human rights abuses extends beyond its relationship with factory farming. Previous investigations have exposed WWF’s partnerships with logging companies destroying indigenous lands in Africa, its funding of paramilitary forces accused of torture and killings in wildlife parks, and its support for conservation policies that have led to the forced eviction of indigenous peoples.
It’s unfortunate that after facing so much scrutiny for betraying its own values, WWF has not learned to weigh its associations more carefully. But it’s more politically acceptable to affiliate with the meat industry — even though it, too, commits atrocities against people and the planet.
How WWF Can Resist Corruption
So what could WWF do to escape Big Meat’s grip? A good start would be to stop taking money from large meat and dairy corporations. It should also remove itself from roundtables, which preempt policy and regulatory crackdowns on the industry and make false solutions seem credible. Finally, it should update its conflict of interest and ethics policies to prohibit certain partnerships and avoid the trap of greenwashing. Once freed from these ties, WWF could lend its immense power to the movements working to build a truly fair and sustainable food system.
