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Canada Standard
3 days ago
- Business
- Canada Standard
Top Free-Market Think Tank Unsure That Canada Needs More Pipelines
On the day that Prime Minister Mark Carney was flying to Washington for a high stakes meeting with United States' president Trump, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith delivered a speech demanding pre-approved oil corridors to the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic coasts under the barely veiled threat of separation of Alberta from Canada. Approving-and potentially paying for-additional oil pipelines out of western Canada has become a kind of loyalty test for federal politicians, writes Mitch Anderson for DeSmog. Smith and other industry surrogates seem to want Carney to demonstrate his fealty to the oil patch or face the prospect of a national unity crisis. Since oil pipelines are somehow being elevated to the importance of a Canadian sovereignty deal-breaker, it is worth asking: are they actually needed? Not according to the Macdonald Laurier Institute (MLI), one of Canada's most influential free-market think tanks. This pro-oil and gas organization stated in an April report that there is currently "sufficient pipeline capacity" for western Canadian oil, arguing that "Canadian oil prices are remarkably strong at the moment." That MLI is not a full-throated cheerleader of additional pipelines is illuminating in contrast to Smith's over-heated oil patch rhetoric. The think tank, after all, has received funding from the likes of Imperial Oil, Enbridge and a foundation founded by oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch. MLI is also a partner of Atlas Network , a U.S. organization that supports over 500 "free market" organizations around the world. MLI also threw cold water on Smith's arctic pipe dreams, stating in a 2024 opinion piece that "roads and seasonal ports in the Canadian North are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, and their use case is limited." MLI went on to predict that "Canadian oil and gas are very unlikely to be shipped and exported through northern ports" due to high costs, poor economics and short ice-free seasons. Other real world evidence demonstrates there is currently no credible business case for new Alberta oil pipelines. The newly completed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion was only 77% full during 2024 and is projected to have 16% excess capacity in 2025. Trans Mountain just downgraded its forecasts out to 2028 showing the massively expensive project still won't be fully utilized three years from now. View our latest digests The company recently confirmed it has no plans to build a third pipeline on their existing right-of-way to Vancouver and could add another 300,000 barrels per day of improvements to existing systems-if needed. Since none of these upgrades are underway, one can conclude that existing capacity will be sufficient for several years into the future. Enbridge is likewise not proposing any new pipelines out of Alberta, instead investing C $4 billion in upgrades on its systems that will add 345,000 barrels per day of capacity by 2028. Enbridge president and CEO Gregory Ebel stressed to investors this month that the company's focus is on " super permit light " incremental improvements, with no projected plans out to 2035 for additional pipelines from western Canada. There are exactly zero private sector players proposing new oil pipeline projects anywhere in Canada, despite the "build, baby build" mantra being repeated by Carney, who advocated during his election campaign for a pipeline to Quebec. The last such oil pipeline proposal was way back in 2014 with the Energy East pipeline project, which was abandoned by investors before the approval process was even completed due to plunging oil prices and far cheaper pipeline options. With private sector pipeline proponents nowhere to be found, does Smith then expect the public to pay for another pipeline in hopes that her rage-farming will finally cease? The eye-wateringly expensive Trans Mountain pipeline was only completed by Canadian taxpayers shelling out $34 billion, of which the public will likely be out of pocket over $18 billion even if it is finally sold to private investors. This massive Canadian subsidy in service of expanded fossil fuel extraction was hardly a nation-building project. When the most expensive infrastructure project in Canadian history finally became operational in May 2024 it did not even garner a photo op , and has seemingly resulted in only increased separatist vitriol from Alberta. Related: Seven Ways Fossil Fuel Subsidies Undermine Energy Security The unused TMX capacity after a year of operating further illustrates that just because a new pipeline is built is no guarantee that oil companies will choose to use it if cheaper tolls are available elsewhere. Despite relentless rhetoric about a "lost decade" due to hostile Ottawa energy policies, Alberta oil production increased by 40% since the federal Liberals came to power in 2015. Canadian oil and gas revenues exceeded $1.1 trillion between 2015 and 2022. The five biggest oil producers in Alberta enjoyed annual operating profits of $44.3 billion in 2021-22-a tenfold increase since 2015. So where did the money go? Those same five companies plowed $20 billion of record-breaking profits into dividends and stock buy-backs in 2022 - more than double the proportion paid out to investors in 2014. And since only 25% of those shareholders are Canadian and even fewer live in Alberta, the vast majority of that windfall is going elsewhere. Meanwhile the embers of ignorance so cynically fanned by Smith are already beginning to singe the fabric of our country. Several separatist parties are now racing to be the first to sacrifice our nation on the altar of ginned-up oil industry grievances. In the absence of a credible and costed business case, the public trolling by Alberta politicians around mythical pipelines is dangerous nonsense and needs to stop. This story originally appeared on DeSmog and is part of Covering Climate Now , a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. Source: The Energy Mix
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The hidden cost of your supermarket sea bass
At the entrance to the fish market in Joal-Fadiouth, a coastal town in central Senegal, a group of women have set up shop under the shade of a small pavilion. A few years ago, they say, the market would have been bustling with ice-cream sellers, salt vendors and horse-drawn carts delivering freshly caught fish to the women, who would set about sun-drying, salting and sorting the catch into affordable portions for local families to buy. Today, trade is dead, says Aissatou Wade, one of the remaining small-scale fish processors left in the town. 'Without fish [to sell], we have no money to send our children to school, buy food or get help if we fall ill,' she says. So what has happened? Wade and her fellow workers have become victims of the supply chain that feeds aquaculture – the world's fastest-growing food sector. A booming global trade in millions of small fish, caught to feed bigger farmed fish abroad, has drained Senegal's waters of a food source the country's population relies on. Until now, this opaque supply chain has obscured which companies use Senegal's fishmeal. However, a two-year investigation by the environmental investigations outlet DeSmog and the Guardian, spanning three countries, can reveal that UK consumers are playing a role in food insecurity and unemployment in west Africa. By examining trade data and shipping records and combining this with on-the-ground reporting in three countries, the investigation found that Turkish-farmed sea bass and sea bream is being fed on fishmeal exported from three factories in Senegal: Omega Fishing and Africa Feed south of Dakar, and Afric Azote at Dakar port. The women who work locally must keep their prices affordable for their customers and say they cannot compete on price with the factories, forcing increasing numbers of them out of work. The data led us from these factories, via Turkey's sea bass and sea bream farms, to Billingsgate fish market in London and the fish counters of supermarkets across the UK. Here, fish grown by farms that have used Senegalese fishmeal are labelled 'responsibly' sourced or farmed, based on certification from the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) and other standards bodies. We can reveal that at least five UK supermarkets – Waitrose, Co-op, Aldi, Lidl and Asda – have sold sea bass or sea bream grown by one of Turkey's largest fish farmers, Kılıç Deniz, or its subsidiary Agromey, which sources fishmeal made from small Senegalese fish. The supplier lists, in-store labels and interviews with industry sources link these supermarkets to Kılıç's farms. These retailers are supplied by two UK wholesalers – New England Seafood International and Ocean Fish, who use Kılıç and Agromey These two wholesalers have also sold sea bass or sea bream to Morrisons, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's and Tesco, the investigation found. The investigation was unable to establish whether that fish came to the wholesalers via Kılıç or another supplier. Between them, these wholesalers have supplied supermarkets with 473 tonnes of fish raised by Kılıç, or its subsidiary Agromey, over the past four years, according to official data. That's enough fish to stack supermarket shelves with nearly 5 million fillets. The factories along Senegal's coastline used to rely on waste products, including fish heads and tails from the port and other factories, but now increasingly use more fresh pelagic or 'forage' fish, the mainstay of African small-scale fisheries. 'Farmed fish comes as this nice product, all the same size, good for the consumer, and no one knows it is jeopardising the prospects of people in west Africa,' says Béatrice Gorez from the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements. More than 3,000 miles away from Senegal, Turkey is a fish-farming powerhouse, supplying more than half of the world's sea bass and a third of its sea bream. Kılıç is one of Turkey's leading sea bass and bream producers, earning $443m annually. A supplier of UK wholesalers and supermarkets, it is the biggest importer of Senegalese fishmeal among 11 Turkish rivals. It has shipped fishmeal and fish oil from Senegal every year for the last four years, a total of 5,400 tonnes, customs data shows. This would have been enough to meet the recommended dietary intake for nearly 2 million people. Sea bass and bream fed on Senegalese fishmeal may also have entered UK markets via three other Turkish fish farmers that also buy west African fishmeal, the investigation found – but it was not possible to trace their products' journey to sale points in the UK. Kılıç told the Guardian it was not breaking any laws by buying raw materials from Senegal, and that 'we do not manage the fishing policies' of other countries. Acknowledging 'concerns in world public opinion' Kılıç added: 'We think we can limit our purchases from Senegal.' Senegalese fish oil and fishmeal made up less than 1% of its total fishmeal purchases in 2024, Kılıç said, adding that the fish used were bigeye grunts and bumpers, which it claimed were 'not caught for human consumption'. Fishmongers and other sources in Senegal dispute this claim. Aby Diouf, a fishmonger, remembers selling dried fish as far inland as Mali and Burkina Faso. Now, she claims, much of that fish is sold to the factories, bypassing the women who wait on the shore to buy it. 'We were proud,' she says. 'We built our houses, we bought cars. We bought boats for our husbands – we even financed their fishing trips.' Diouf, who raised and educated her seven children from the trade, now rents out plastic chairs for baptisms and weddings. Nearly a quarter of the global catch of all wild-caught species – 17 million tonnes – was ground into meal or oil in 2022, the majority of it fed to farmed seafood. For a company farming millons of fish a year, even a small percentage of its purchases of fishmeal can have an outsized impact in Senegal. 'Changes that seem small at a global scale can have devastating consequences locally,' says Christina Hicks, an expert on small-scale fisheries and nutrition at Lancaster University. In 2023, a year in which its fishmeal exports reached an eight-year high, persistently high food costs pushed Senegal into crisis levels of hunger. Thousands of women have lost their jobs, according to Didier Gascuel, a fisheries ecologist at the Institut Agro Rennes-Angers in western France, who has lived and worked in Senegal. 'We are entering danger zones,' he says. 'It is clear that overexploitation combined with climate change and water degradation can lead to a collapse phenomena.' The Senegalese government offers financial sweeteners to companies that export more than 80% of their products or services, including a 50% discount on income tax and exemption from import duties. (The government did not respond to requests for comment.) Once the fishmeal arrives at Kılıç's feed mill, it is mixed with wheat, soy, fish oil and other ingredients to feed the millions of fish Kılıç harvests annually. Some of it travels frozen, overland or by boat in 18-tonne containers to ports in the UK such as Liverpool, Portsmouth, Dover and Hull. A quarter of all imports of Turkish bass and bream into the UK between 2021 and 2024 were from Kılıç, according to data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), released in a freedom of information request. Fish farmed by Kılıç, or its subsidiary Agromey, has two routes to UK plates. The first is via hubs such as London's Billingsgate market, where men in white overalls gather at dawn among boxes brimming full of silvery sea bream and sea bass. The Guardian found some of them marked 'Kılıç'. 'We sell a lot, about 100 tonnes a week,' one trader for another UK wholesaler, Polydor, told the Guardian. 'It goes everywhere: fishmongers, Chinese restaurants, the public.' Defra data shows that Polydor has imported more than 7,000 tonnes of sea bream from Kılıç in the past four years, equivalent to more than 17 million whole fish, or 78 million fillets. The second route to UK tables is via wholesalers to supermarkets. In 2024, more than half a million fillets of sea bass farmed by Kılıç or its subsidiary arrived on supermarket shelves via New England Seafood International, which has offices in Grimsby and Chessington and Cornwall-based Ocean Fish, Defra data shows. In an opaque and fragmented supply chain, there is no way for consumers to tell if the sea bass or sea bream fillet they are buying was fed on fishmeal from Senegal. The Guardian and Desmog investigation has established that Kılıç-produced fish is on sale at Waitrose, which lists the Turkish company as one of its suppliers, and the Guardian understands that Co-op sells about six tonnes of sea bass farmed by Kılıç a year. Identification on packaging, supplier lists and conversations with employees of Kılıç, and its subsidiary Agromey, shows Lidl, Asda and Aldi have also sourced from Kılıç or Agromey. Sainsbury's and Tesco have sourced sea bass and sea bream from New England Seafood International, according to labelling on fillets on sale in supermarket branches and their latest supplier lists. When presented with the findings of the investigation, Lidl, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose declined to comment, referring the Guardian to a statement from Sophie De Salis, sustainability policy adviser at the British Retail Council: 'UK retailers are dedicated to sourcing seafood products responsibly. Our members regularly review fishing practices in their supply chains to ensure they meet the highest standards.' De Salis added: 'Retailers adhere to all legal requirements around product labelling. They ensure high standards are upheld throughout their supply chains through third-party certified verification.' Morrisons, Aldi and Marks & Spencer all said they did not currently source from Kılıç or Agromey farms but declined to say whether they had in the past. Aldi also said that, since last year, it no longer sources from the wholesalers mentioned in the investigation. Asda did not respond to requests for comment. Of the wholesalers involved in the chain, New England Seafood International said it was dedicated to 'sourcing responsible and sustainable seafood'. The other two, Polydor and Ocean Fish, did not respond to requests for comment. The Senegalese-owned factory Afric Azote, in Dakar, denied it contributed to overfishing or women's unemployment and said it only ever used whole, fresh fish when this was no longer fit for human consumption. The other factories in Senegal, Omega Fishing and Africa Feed, did not respond to requests for comment. Seafood fed on small west African fish can be labelled 'responsibly' sourced or farmed as long as it meets standards determined by the ASC. Under ASC rules, a farm can only buy fishmeal from sources where fisheries are 'reasonably well managed' with healthy stocks. Kılıç, which produces a quarter of its sea bass and sea bream from four farms certified by the ASC, said it was not in breach of ASC standards. The ASC said that The ASC said Senegal was not listed as a sourcing country in 2024 for whole fish marine ingredients by Kılıç. But in any case sourcing of this fish may not breach its rules, it said, if these fish were mixed into feed. These fish could be mixed into feed as long as the balance of ingredients met its standards. Diaba Diop, head of a national network of women fish workers in Senegal, says foreign companies should source their ingredients elsewhere. 'The sea will become a liquid desert,' she says. 'When people don't have enough to eat, we can't use it to feed animals.' Abdou Karim Sall, head of the fishers's network in Joal-Fadiouth, has seen the town emptying like the sea, as young men who see no future in the country risk the 1,500km boat trip to the Canary Islands, a perilous journey that claimed more than 10,000 lives last year. 'Because there's no fish, there's no hope,' says Karim Sall. 'The fish should have stayed in Senegal.' Additional reporting by Oscar Rothstein (Danwatch), Mustapha Manneh and Michaela Hermann
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
The hidden cost of your supermarket sea bass
At the entrance to the fish market in Joal-Fadiouth, a coastal town in central Senegal, a group of women have set up shop under the shade of a small pavilion. A few years ago, they say, the market would have been bustling with ice-cream sellers, salt vendors and horse-drawn carts delivering freshly caught fish to the women, who would set about sun-drying, salting and sorting the catch into affordable portions for local families to buy. Today, trade is dead, says Aissatou Wade, one of the remaining small-scale fish processors left in the town. 'Without fish [to sell], we have no money to send our children to school, buy food or get help if we fall ill,' she says. So what has happened? Wade and her fellow workers have become victims of the supply chain that feeds aquaculture – the world's fastest-growing food sector. A booming global trade in millions of small fish, caught to feed bigger farmed fish abroad, has drained Senegal's waters of a food source the country's population relies on. Until now, this opaque supply chain has obscured which companies use Senegal's fishmeal. However, a two-year investigation by the environmental investigations outlet DeSmog and the Guardian, spanning three countries, can reveal that UK consumers are playing a role in food insecurity and unemployment in west Africa. By examining trade data and shipping records and combining this with on-the-ground reporting in three countries, the investigation found that Turkish-farmed sea bass and sea bream is being fed on fishmeal exported from three factories in Senegal: Omega Fishing and Africa Feed south of Dakar, and Afric Azote at Dakar port. The women who work locally must keep their prices affordable for their customers and say they cannot compete on price with the factories, forcing increasing numbers of them out of work. The data led us from these factories, via Turkey's sea bass and sea bream farms, to Billingsgate fish market in London and the fish counters of supermarkets across the UK. Here, fish grown by farms that have used Senegalese fishmeal are labelled 'responsibly' sourced or farmed, based on certification from the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) and other standards bodies. We can reveal that at least five UK supermarkets – Waitrose, Co-op, Aldi, Lidl and Asda – have sold sea bass or sea bream grown by one of Turkey's largest fish farmers, Kılıç Deniz, or its subsidiary Agromey, which sources fishmeal made from small Senegalese fish. The supplier lists, in-store labels and interviews with industry sources link these supermarkets to Kılıç's farms. These retailers are supplied by two UK wholesalers – New England Seafood International and Ocean Fish, who use Kılıç and Agromey These two wholesalers have also sold sea bass or sea bream to Morrisons, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's and Tesco, the investigation found. The investigation was unable to establish whether that fish came to the wholesalers via Kılıç or another supplier. Between them, these wholesalers have supplied supermarkets with 473 tonnes of fish raised by Kılıç, or its subsidiary Agromey, over the past four years, according to official data. That's enough fish to stack supermarket shelves with nearly 5 million fillets. The factories along Senegal's coastline used to rely on waste products, including fish heads and tails from the port and other factories, but now increasingly use more fresh pelagic or 'forage' fish, the mainstay of African small-scale fisheries. 'Farmed fish comes as this nice product, all the same size, good for the consumer, and no one knows it is jeopardising the prospects of people in west Africa,' says Béatrice Gorez from the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements. More than 3,000 miles away from Senegal, Turkey is a fish-farming powerhouse, supplying more than half of the world's sea bass and a third of its sea bream. Kılıç is one of Turkey's leading sea bass and bream producers, earning $443m annually. A supplier of UK wholesalers and supermarkets, it is the biggest importer of Senegalese fishmeal among 11 Turkish rivals. It has shipped fishmeal and fish oil from Senegal every year for the last four years, a total of 5,400 tonnes, customs data shows. This would have been enough to meet the recommended dietary intake for nearly 2 million people. Sea bass and bream fed on Senegalese fishmeal may also have entered UK markets via three other Turkish fish farmers that also buy west African fishmeal, the investigation found – but it was not possible to trace their products' journey to sale points in the UK. Kılıç told the Guardian it was not breaking any laws by buying raw materials from Senegal, and that 'we do not manage the fishing policies' of other countries. Acknowledging 'concerns in world public opinion' Kılıç added: 'We think we can limit our purchases from Senegal.' Senegalese fish oil and fishmeal made up less than 1% of its total fishmeal purchases in 2024, Kılıç said, adding that the fish used were bigeye grunts and bumpers, which it claimed were 'not caught for human consumption'. Fishmongers and other sources in Senegal dispute this claim. Aby Diouf, a fishmonger, remembers selling dried fish as far inland as Mali and Burkina Faso. Now, she claims, much of that fish is sold to the factories, bypassing the women who wait on the shore to buy it. 'We were proud,' she says. 'We built our houses, we bought cars. We bought boats for our husbands – we even financed their fishing trips.' Diouf, who raised and educated her seven children from the trade, now rents out plastic chairs for baptisms and weddings. Nearly a quarter of the global catch of all wild-caught species – 17 million tonnes – was ground into meal or oil in 2022, the majority of it fed to farmed seafood. For a company farming millons of fish a year, even a small percentage of its purchases of fishmeal can have an outsized impact in Senegal. 'Changes that seem small at a global scale can have devastating consequences locally,' says Christina Hicks, an expert on small-scale fisheries and nutrition at Lancaster University. In 2023, a year in which its fishmeal exports reached an eight-year high, persistently high food costs pushed Senegal into crisis levels of hunger. Thousands of women have lost their jobs, according to Didier Gascuel, a fisheries ecologist at the Institut Agro Rennes-Angers in western France, who has lived and worked in Senegal. 'We are entering danger zones,' he says. 'It is clear that overexploitation combined with climate change and water degradation can lead to a collapse phenomena.' The Senegalese government offers financial sweeteners to companies that export more than 80% of their products or services, including a 50% discount on income tax and exemption from import duties. (The government did not respond to requests for comment.) Once the fishmeal arrives at Kılıç's feed mill, it is mixed with wheat, soy, fish oil and other ingredients to feed the millions of fish Kılıç harvests annually. Some of it travels frozen, overland or by boat in 18-tonne containers to ports in the UK such as Liverpool, Portsmouth, Dover and Hull. A quarter of all imports of Turkish bass and bream into the UK between 2021 and 2024 were from Kılıç, according to data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), released in a freedom of information request. Fish farmed by Kılıç, or its subsidiary Agromey, has two routes to UK plates. The first is via hubs such as London's Billingsgate market, where men in white overalls gather at dawn among boxes brimming full of silvery sea bream and sea bass. The Guardian found some of them marked 'Kılıç'. 'We sell a lot, about 100 tonnes a week,' one trader for another UK wholesaler, Polydor, told the Guardian. 'It goes everywhere: fishmongers, Chinese restaurants, the public.' Defra data shows that Polydor has imported more than 7,000 tonnes of sea bream from Kılıç in the past four years, equivalent to more than 17 million whole fish, or 78 million fillets. The second route to UK tables is via wholesalers to supermarkets. In 2024, more than half a million fillets of sea bass farmed by Kılıç or its subsidiary arrived on supermarket shelves via New England Seafood International, which has offices in Grimsby and Chessington and Cornwall-based Ocean Fish, Defra data shows. In an opaque and fragmented supply chain, there is no way for consumers to tell if the sea bass or sea bream fillet they are buying was fed on fishmeal from Senegal. The Guardian and Desmog investigation has established that Kılıç-produced fish is on sale at Waitrose, which lists the Turkish company as one of its suppliers, and the Guardian understands that Co-op sells about six tonnes of sea bass farmed by Kılıç a year. Identification on packaging, supplier lists and conversations with employees of Kılıç, and its subsidiary Agromey, shows Lidl, Asda and Aldi have also sourced from Kılıç or Agromey. Sainsbury's and Tesco have sourced sea bass and sea bream from New England Seafood International, according to labelling on fillets on sale in supermarket branches and their latest supplier lists. When presented with the findings of the investigation, Lidl, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose declined to comment, referring the Guardian to a statement from Sophie De Salis, sustainability policy adviser at the British Retail Council: 'UK retailers are dedicated to sourcing seafood products responsibly. Our members regularly review fishing practices in their supply chains to ensure they meet the highest standards.' De Salis added: 'Retailers adhere to all legal requirements around product labelling. They ensure high standards are upheld throughout their supply chains through third-party certified verification.' Morrisons, Aldi and Marks & Spencer all said they did not currently source from Kılıç or Agromey farms but declined to say whether they had in the past. Aldi also said that, since last year, it no longer sources from the wholesalers mentioned in the investigation. Asda did not respond to requests for comment. Of the wholesalers involved in the chain, New England Seafood International said it was dedicated to 'sourcing responsible and sustainable seafood'. The other two, Polydor and Ocean Fish, did not respond to requests for comment. The Senegalese-owned factory Afric Azote, in Dakar, denied it contributed to overfishing or women's unemployment and said it only ever used whole, fresh fish when this was no longer fit for human consumption. The other factories in Senegal, Omega Fishing and Africa Feed, did not respond to requests for comment. Seafood fed on small west African fish can be labelled 'responsibly' sourced or farmed as long as it meets standards determined by the ASC. Under ASC rules, a farm can only buy fishmeal from sources where fisheries are 'reasonably well managed' with healthy stocks. Kılıç, which produces a quarter of its sea bass and sea bream from four farms certified by the ASC, said it was not in breach of ASC standards. The ASC said that The ASC said Senegal was not listed as a sourcing country in 2024 for whole fish marine ingredients by Kılıç. But in any case sourcing of this fish may not breach its rules, it said, if these fish were mixed into feed. These fish could be mixed into feed as long as the balance of ingredients met its standards. Diaba Diop, head of a national network of women fish workers in Senegal, says foreign companies should source their ingredients elsewhere. 'The sea will become a liquid desert,' she says. 'When people don't have enough to eat, we can't use it to feed animals.' Abdou Karim Sall, head of the fishers's network in Joal-Fadiouth, has seen the town emptying like the sea, as young men who see no future in the country risk the 1,500km boat trip to the Canary Islands, a perilous journey that claimed more than 10,000 lives last year. 'Because there's no fish, there's no hope,' says Karim Sall. 'The fish should have stayed in Senegal.' Additional reporting by Oscar Rothstein (Danwatch), Beril Eski, Mustapha Manneh and Michaela Hermann
The Guardian
11-04-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
PR campaign may have fuelled food study backlash, leaked document shows
A leaked document shows that vested interests may have been behind a 'mud-slinging' PR campaign to discredit a landmark environment study, according to an investigation. The Eat-Lancet Commission study, published in 2019, set out to answer the question: how can we feed the world's growing population without causing catastrophic climate breakdown? The report recommended that if global red meat eating was cut by 50%, the 'planetary health diet' would provide nutritious food to all while tackling the harms caused by animal agriculture, which accounts for over 14% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It suggested individuals – particularly in wealthy countries – should increase their consumption of nuts, pulses and other plant-based foods while cutting meat and sugar from their diets. It may have seemed like a fairly straightforward proposal but the backlash was ferocious, with researchers receiving personal threats and insults. Thousands of negative posts were shared on Twitter (now X), and more than 500 articles were published criticising the report. A leaked document seen by the climate website DeSmog reveals that helping to fuel this backlash was a PR firm, Red Flag, which represented the Animal Agriculture Alliance, a meat and dairy industry coalition set up to protect the sector against 'emerging threats', and which has staff from Cargill and Smithfield Foods – two of the world's five largest meat companies – on its board. DeSmog has seen a document from the PR firm which states: 'In the two weeks following publication of the Eat-Lancet report, this campaign's messages have continued to demonstrate remarkable success. Key stories returned time and again in traditional and social media to reach major online influencers, particularly highlighting the radical nature of the Eat-Lancet diet and hypocrisy criticisms levelled at the Eat founders.' As part of the campaign's impact, in the weeks following publication, the document states that nearly half of the 1,315 articles about the Eat-Lancet report included Red Flag's 'campaign messages and quotes' and adds that 103 articles mentioned alleged hypocrisy of the group's founders – 'sparking a Twitter conversation that received over 1 million more views' than the top tweets posted by Eat about the report. Red Flag's document includes, as highlights of the campaign, an article in the UK's Spectator magazine about plans 'to change your diet by force', and a number of social media posts claiming the report was 'dangerous' and told 'poor people to eat dirt'. The PR firm's precise role in seeding or amplifying these posts, if any, is unknown. 'Targeted briefings and stakeholder activation ensured' that some framed the Eat-Lancet report, plus a subsequent report, 'as radical and out of touch'. Briefings included an 'advance press engagement' with the Institute of Economic Affairs, a UK libertarian thinktank, with hostile articles about the Eat-Lancet study quoting the group, which dismissed the report as an elitist attack on normal people. In the year following Eat-Lancet's publication, scientists involved in it were targeted online. In some cases, the backlash led to them withdrawing from press appearances to discuss the research and undermined their academic careers. There is no suggestion that Red Flag was involved in or responsible for these threats. One author, Dr Marco Springmann, said he faced serious burnout after the 'media storm' that went on for a year after publication. A senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and a professorial research fellow at the Institute for Global Health at University College London, he was repeatedly accused of bias for eating a plant-based diet. 'Usually I lead on two to three studies a year, but in the year following Eat-Lancet, I wasn't able to even lead on one,' Springmann said. Dr Line Gordon, another author of the study, said she was 'overwhelmed' with 'really nasty' comments in the immediate aftermath of its publication, and the backlash was 'exhausting'. 'I was excited about the research we had done and how important it was and how much work we had put into it,' she said. 'However, when we launched, I remember waking up in the morning and I've never been attacked in so many ways.' And Dr Gunhild Stordalen, the chief executive of the environmental advocacy group Eat which, alongside the Wellcome Trust, funded the research, was one of those personally targeted, along with her husband, Petter Stordalen, a Norwegian property mogul who was pictured on Instagram eating a large burger. Other articles cited the couple's high-carbon lifestyle, including owning a private jet. A study of social media posts in the months after the report's publication, published in the Lancet journal, found opponents of the research had dominated discussions and used 'misinformation, conspiracy theories, and personal attacks' to discredit the work. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion 'Red Flag turned Eat-Lancet into a culture-war issue,' Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami and an expert on lobbying, told DeSmog. 'Instead of having nuanced conversations about the data, Red Flag takes us back to mud slinging. This document is a portrait of what we're up against – as people who care about the truth, about climate change, and about the future.' Experts told DeSmog that the online backlash was one of the earliest examples of a culture war around dietary change that had become well-recognised in more recent years. Victor Galaz, an associate professor at the Stockholm Resilience Center, Stockholm University, which was involved in shaping the Eat-Lancet report, studied the online response at the time. 'Everyone was shocked by the volume and tone of the tweets: the aggressiveness and degree of lying, to put it very bluntly,' he said. 'Climate change science has faced this kind of backlash for a while. But in this domain – diets and meat – that was new to people. Everyone was shocked.' The researchers behind the report were clear that they welcomed legitimate critiques of its contents – it was not without criticisms in the academic world – but online articles and social media posts often overblew or did not engage with these nuanced debates. 'We are not perfect. It's good to hear constructive criticism, that's part of academic discourse,' said Springmann. 'But if it gets into an ideological shouting match, we don't get anywhere. I don't do research to fight.' While there is no suggestion that Red Flag was involved in personal attacks against the Eat-Lancet authors, Jacquet told DeSmog that the PR firm's campaign had likely helped to make the report so divisive. 'The industry doesn't make investments like this whimsically,' she said. 'They know that this affects the tenor of the conversation. It's a really illustrative example of how PR firms operate in the 21st century.' Yet in spite of the online backlash the Eat-Lancet report has been one of the most influential studies of recent decades. It is among the papers most often cited by governments and in policy briefs across all topics, used in more than 600 such documents since its launch. With the second Eat-Lancet report due out this year, Springmann, who joined the second research group despite having reservations, told DeSmog he hoped the new research could spark a more constructive conversation. 'It's a big opportunity to put the debate back on a better track,' he said.
