Read the full story in The Guardian.
A beef industry-funded effort to teach teenagers about cattle’s climate impact was quietly scrapped following backlash from some ranchers, who disputed the premise that cows contribute to global heating.
The episode is the latest example of the livestock industry’s decades-long battle to determine what US children learn about cows and the climate.
The American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture (AFBFA) and its Food and Agriculture Center for Science Education produce a free science curriculum used by around 1.2m students across more than 100 school districts nationwide.
Late last year, the foundation announced a new lesson exploring “how cattle produce methane and its role within the broader environmental and biological systems”.
Within months it had been removed, following online criticism from ranchers, with Brett Kenzy, prominent South Dakota farmer, telling a trade paper “it’s not fair claiming that cows are harming the environment because they’re not”. Kenzy, who chairs a committee of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA), called the lesson a “slap in the face”.