In the 1950s, with evidence mounting of tobacco’s role in cancer, the industry began to develop a range of tactics to prevent government regulation and to keep people buying its lethal products. Since then, every ‘dirty’ sector—from the oil industry to Big Meat—has used the same tried-and-tested tactics to keep their profits flowing, despite the horrific impact of their business. How do they do it? In three words: Deny. Delay. Dilute.
Tobacco Playbook Tactics: Denials
The first step to prevent being regulated is to aggressively deny that you are doing anything wrong. You pay scientists to come up with conclusions that oppose all the independent research, and you incentivize people with influence to cite it everywhere—online, in the media, even in parliamentary debates. Just sowing a little doubt can completely derail plans for reform, and dirty industries know this very well.
The fossil fuel industry conducted research into climate change as far back as 1954. That’s when they knew that their product would disrupt the Earth’s systems but they continued to deny its impact for decades. In one ad from 1991, they stated “Doomsday is cancelled” and asked, “Who told you the earth was warming … Chicken Little?” They complained about “weak” evidence, “non-existent” proof, inaccurate climate models, and they asserted that the physics was “open to debate”. And all the while they knew the truth.
Among the industries to adopt this same tactic is the alcohol industry. And not only did it embrace denial, it went one better and asserted the exact opposite of the truth: It told the world that alcohol in moderation is actually good for you. Dr. Tim Stockwell, whose research revealed the reality of alcohol’s impacts, told The Guardian: “It’s been a propaganda coup for the alcohol industry to propose that moderate use of their product lengthens people’s lives. The idea has impacted national drinking guidelines, estimates of alcohol’s burden of disease worldwide, and has been an impediment to effective policymaking on alcohol and public health.”
Unsurprisingly, Big Meat has adopted this brazen approach, too.
Big Meat’s Denials
Because the production and consumption of meat has negative consequences for animals, our health, public health, the climate, rivers, the ocean, air quality, forests, and wild animals, the industry has an awful lot to deny. They do this both explicitly and through misleading representations.
One explicit claim is that we don’t need to eat meat to reduce our climate impact; we can simply buy locally produced meat instead. But the scientific evidence clearly does not support this. Says Dr. Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data, “Transport typically accounts for less than 1% of beef’s GHG emissions: eating locally has minimal effects on its total footprint.”
And then there is the claim that meat is only a minor environmental issue and we really ought to focus our attention on bigger problems. This misdirection has been used by Dr. Frank Mitloehner, a UC Davis scientist, who is funded by the beef industry. His shockingly misleading advice is to “have the burger. Just make sure you walk to the restaurant.” The truth is that the farming of animals for food actually creates more climate emissions than the entire global transport sector, so driving to the restaurant and ordering the veggie burger would have a greater impact.
The meat industry has known since at least 1989 of meat’s role in global warming, and—according to scientists from the University of Miami and Yale—it deliberately “planned to obstruct efforts to shift US diets to reduce emissions.” It continues to deny its role in multiple environmental and public health crises to this day.
When it comes to the experiences of animals on farms, we need only look at the industry’s advertising campaigns and compare them to investigators’ images to see how the public is deceived into thinking that animals are well cared for on farms. This type of denial is subtle, but it is also incredibly effective.
Playbook Tactics: Delay
All the while dirty industries deny the impacts of their products, they know that this tactic won’t work forever and that one day they will be regulated and their vast profits will dip. Their job is to delay that inevitable outcome for as long as possible. And, just as the tobacco industry pioneered, there are lots of ways to do this. They can make political donations to ensure they have friends in high places. They can lobby for delays at every level, even on the international stage. And they can launch legal actions to challenge any proposed regulation, something they can easily afford because the dirtiest industries are also among the wealthiest.
If, despite their best efforts, they sense the winds of change, these industries manage to kick the regulatory can further down the road by promising to self-regulate. “There is no need to spend time and money regulating us!” they say. “We’ll do it ourselves.”
As the impact of fossil fuels on the planet and our future becomes ever more critical, Big Oil has predictably made a series of promises to cut its emissions. But guess what? It doesn’t follow through. And far from making efforts to keep these promises, research has found that during the delay they buy with these promises, most companies state an intention of actually increasing production, not limiting it.
This same delaying tactic has been utilized by many other dirty industries. Says Dr. Katherine Severi of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, “Just like tobacco companies, alcohol companies have a long history of disrupting and delaying health policy, which is why the World Health Organization advises governments to protect against undue influence from the alcohol industry.”
But who is protecting governments from the undue influence of Big Meat?
Big Meat’s Delaying Tactics
It’s no accident that the biggest industrial meat and dairy companies turned out in record numbers to COP28 where the world’s leaders were meeting to discuss mitigating climate breakdown. Ben Lilliston, of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told The Guardian: “With greater scrutiny over emissions from meat and dairy companies, it is not surprising they are stepping up their game to head off any Cop outcome that might hinder their operations. Even so, a tripling of delegates is alarming.”
One example of the power of delaying tactics comes from the world of industrial chicken production. When the manure from the vast factory farms leeches into waterways, it creates algal blooms which poison rivers and kill wildlife. Devastated by this pollution of the Illinois River, Oklahoma’s Attorney General Drew Edmondson brought legal action against several industrial chicken agribusinesses, including Cargill, back in 2005. The case was not heard until 2009 and then, for reasons that have never been made clear, the case languished for 18 long years. And all the while, the industry’s pollution ran rampant. In 2023, the judge finally ruled in favor of the state but the companies have still not been sanctioned or forced to clean up their mess. And while they achieved two decades of sanction-free river pollution in the United States, they were also busy exporting their polluting industry to other parts of the world. Today, the once pristine British River Wye, which had teemed with wildlife, is all but dead, thanks to the proliferation of chicken farms owned by Cargill.
Tobacco Tactics: Dilute
When time runs out on the delaying tactics and regulation becomes inevitable, industry-paid lawyers swoop in to get the lightest touch possible.
One example: When the health hazards associated with smoking were discovered, the Surgeon General issued multiple reports warning of the dangers. The Federal Trade Commission brought multiple suits against the tobacco industry for misleading advertising, and in 1965 required that health warnings be placed on all cigarette packages. The Federal Communications Commission also banned cigarette advertising on radio and television in 1969. But, according to Yale University, “Under pressure from the tobacco industry lobby, Congress diluted many of these regulatory efforts, while the Food and Drug Administration claimed that cigarettes were beyond its scope until 1996, when it became involved in the issue of cigarette sales to minors.”
More recently, a Bill was tabled in the UK parliament that proposed banning tobacco sales to anyone born after 2009 while also tightening regulations on nicotine products. With the writing on the wall, the industry began lobbying hard for a weakening of this proposed law, and predictably put forward a compromise that would allow them to keep profiting: the raising of the legal age for tobacco sales from 18 to 21. In Malaysia and New Zealand, where politicians have also tabled policies to phase out tobacco use, the industry is following the exact same playbook.
Big Ag’s Dilution Tactics
The public hates to see animals in cages, and yet on egg farms across most of the world, this is how hens are forced to live. As the campaign to free birds from battery cages spread across Europe, the industry came to realize it would not win and instead switched tactics and lobbied hard to dilute the proposed ban. And it succeeded. Today, hens across the EU are confined inside “enriched cages”—which, aside from a piece of wood to stand on and a curtain for “privacy”, are little better than the old battery cages. Nothing has really changed.
Another example: To reduce the emissions created by the meat and dairy industries, the European Union launched a Farm to Fork initiative, noting that moving to a “more plant-based diet with less red and processed meat” would reduce the food system’s environmental impact. Eleven policy initiatives were put forward to help the planet and curb the activities of this reckless industry, but one by one, Big Ag’s lobbyists successfully weakened them or killed them off entirely.
The Pollution Paradox
Journalist George Monbiot coined the term “the pollution paradox”. In essence, the more polluting a company is, the more money it must spend to ensure it is not regulated out of existence, and that means politicians and other decision-makers are regularly exposed to the propaganda of the dirtiest industries.
There is a reason that broccoli growers do not roam the corridors of power… they do not need to! They grow tasty, wholesome food that has a low carbon footprint, is good for our health, will never unleash a pandemic, and do not lock up billions of animals in inhumane, squalid conditions.
But Big Tobacco, Big Oil, and Big Ag throw vast sums of money into spreading misinformation to confuse the public and to prevent a political crackdown on their harmful industries because it is the only way they can survive. While this blog cites just a few examples of the tactics used, there are countless more from all over the world. If you want to understand more about how the Tobacco Playbook is employed by the industries that harm us, we recommend:
👉 This article on tobacco tactics
👉 This analysis relating to tobacco tactics and junk food
👉 This article relating to tobacco tactics and forever chemicals
👉 This article on Big Oil using tobacco tactics
👉 This article on the alcohol industry using tobacco tactics
👉 This report on meat and dairy industries using tobacco tactics
Yup. As you can see, they are all at it.
