Why WWF Cares about Meat, Poultry, Dairy, and Seafood

Feeding 10 billion people sustainably by 2050 is one of humanity’s greatest challenges. The current global food production system, which depends on resilient, healthy ecosystems, has major environmental impacts, and is pushing the planet beyond its natural limits.

We all need to be aware of the consequences of our actions, including the impacts of the food we eat and waste.

Meat production, and beef in particular, requires more natural resources than other animals raised for food, so it’s critical to produce it more sustainably, in ways that deliver maximum benefit from finite resources.

If we do it right, more sustainable production can be an important step in limiting environmental impacts around the world and improving food equity. This would include improving air quality, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protecting native forests and grasslands , efficiently managing water use and limiting water pollution, promoting soil health, and protecting biodiversity.

While more sustainable practices and resilience in the food system can vary by product, geography and production system, we encourage an outcome-based approach to food production that:

  • Preserves natural habitats, diverse wildlife, and critical ecosystem services;
  • Reduces the use of land, water, energy, and other natural resources; and
  • Limits waste, water irrigation and pollution, soil health, and greenhouse gas emissions.


Tackling an issue as big as creating a more sustainable and resilient food system requires collaboration.

That’s why WWF works with a diverse range of stakeholders to ensure that all food production, including animal and alternate proteins, are produced and processed in a way that is more socially responsible, economically viable, and environmentally sustainable.

From food producers, traders, processors, brands, retailers, restaurants, trade associations, financial institutions, and philanthropic foundations to governments, we all need to work together to redouble the shift to producing, sourcing, financing, and enabling policies to support more sustainable food systems both now and in the face of climate change.

Our partners are committed to working with us to tackle these environmental issues. As with all our corporate partners, we work with companies with measurable, ambitious sustainability targets and keep them accountable in meeting their goals. Our experience has shown that sectors change when stakeholders share a common understanding of issues and trends, as well as problems and solutions. They can then better prioritize current and future risks and develop joint strategies to address them. Together, we’re examining what sustainable solutions are possible, what works and what doesn’t, how to sequence strategies most effectively, which tools are critical to improve animal protein as well as other critical food production globally, and what it all costs, recognizing that it is critical to balance environmental, social, and economic concerns.

Our goal for 2030 is to reduce the key impacts of animal protein by 50% per gram of protein produced in the US and by 20% globally.

Impacts

  • land conversion in the Chaco

    Beef and soy are the leading contributors to global deforestation, especially in Latin America which leads the world in forest loss. The world’s grasslands are under also pressure from expanding production of livestock and feed, as well as energy production, infrastructure, and development. For example, Brazil’s Cerrado and Pantanal as well as the Chaco of Paraguay, Argentina, and Bolivia are losing grasslands to expanding agricultural production. Across the Great Plains of the US, Canada, and Mexico, the expanding production of wheat, corn, soy, pulses, and alfalfa—some of which is used for livestock feed—is contributing to the loss of intact grasslands that are home to pronghorn, songbirds, swift fox, and more.

  • NGP Plowprint Aerial Cover

    Driven by deforestation and grassland loss, livestock emissions and feed production, agriculture is responsible for about one-quarter of humankind’s direct, global greenhouse gas emissions, with livestock contributing over 10%. In the US, agriculture accounts for about 9% of the country’s emissions and livestock less than 4%.

  • Aerial view of a salmon farm in Aysen Region, Chile

    Since 2014, people have consumed more farm-raised seafood than wild-caught annually and by 2016 aquaculture production even surpassed global beef production for the first time. While aquaculture can help alleviate the pressure that demand for seafood is putting on oceans, several species still rely on wild-caught fish or land based ingredients for feed. In addition, the expansion of fish farms can impact a variety of landscapes, such as the fjords of Chile where salmon are raised in open-water pens and mangroves of South and Southeast Asia that are cleared to raise milkfish and shrimp. Most Chilean salmon are also shipped to global markets by air freight which accounts for additional GHG emissions. 


  • cattle and wildflowers

    The production of livestock and feed also requires a lot of water, particularly for animal feed. While water requirements differ dramatically by geography and production system, global averages are about 1,847 gallons of water to yield one pound of beef, 718 gallons per pound of pork, 518 gallons per pound of chicken, 391 gallons per pound of eggs, and 122 gallons per pound of milk. Animal production in the US and EU is generally more efficient.

What We Do

We’ve already made progress but there is a lot more work to do. When it comes to changing the way a global supply chain works, we need to pursue bold and sustainable solutions. Industry leaders play a huge role in influencing change and delivering the innovative and implementable solutions that WWF helped to create.

Ranch hand herding cattle at El Cachepé Ranch and Wildlife Refuge. La Eduvigis, Gran Chaco region, Northern Argentina.

Over the years, we’ve worked with producers, processors, retailers and other players to help define sustainability and create principles, criteria and indicators that a growing number of companies are adopting to improve the sustainability of many commodities.

Ranching sustainably to maintain grasslands
Livestock grazing can be used to help maintain grasslands in landscapes that evolved with grazing wildlife such as bison, elk, and pronghorn in the Northern Great Plains of the US and Canada. Through the Sustainable Ranching Initiative, WWF works with ranchers in this grassland ecosystem to identify and share better management practices that maintain grasslands, protecting them from conversion and have a positive impact on soil, grass, water, and wildlife. We partner with diverse local, state, and national stakeholders to develop resilient communities in rural regions that depend on agriculture for their livelihoods by engaging producers on ecological and economic sustainability and identifying tools (such as long-term contracts) that help to increase their capacity to stay on the land and care for it, as they have done for generations.

Since 2021, 112 ranches have enrolled in the Ranch Systems and Viability Planning (RSVP) program, covering 1,256,767 acres of land. RSVP ranchers commit to not converting their grasslands and work with WWF to establish and implement a grazing management plan and monitoring program. In 2024, we set a baseline for each ranch enrolled and will have data on the impact on soil carbon, water infiltration, biodiversity and vegetation moving forward. In this short amount of time, the program has seen measurable impacts in plant diversity and bird species observed on RSVP ranches, while innovative infrastructure projects such as virtual fencing are helping ranchers improve livestock management and safeguard biodiversity while reducing costs. The RSVP program also aims to spotlight the important role ranchers and farmers play in conservation and amplify the diversity of participants. 52% of RSVP ranchers are women owners or co-owners, and over 30% of participants are under the age of 40.

Improving beef production
WWF is a founding member of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (which has since set global goals for climate and nature) and its national counterparts in the US, and Canada. GRSB has also worked to align national roundtables beyond the US and Canda. Together with other NGOs, industry stakeholders, and scientists, we’re developing programs for producers, processors, retailers, and other supply chain stakeholders to measurably and transparently improve beef’s environmental, social, and economic sustainability. The Canadian Beef Roundtable was the first roundtable to pilot the GRSB principles in 2016 with WWF and other stakeholders and has developed a certification framework and reported that producing 1 kg of beef now creates 15% less greenhouse gases than in 2014.

Conserving natural habitats
As a member of the Conservation and Markets Initiative, with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, WWF works with traders, processors, meat packers, retailers, restaurants, banks, investors, and other institutions to eliminate the loss of key Latin American ecosystems—the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, and the Chaco woodlands and grasslands and forests of Argentina and Paraguay—from global beef and soy supply chains.

More responsible aquaculture
WWF works with the aquaculture industry, with stakeholders and with seafood buyers across the supply chain to encourage improvement in both freshwater and marine seafood farming practices by sourcing from producers engaged in impactful improvement efforts, including those farms working to achieve the independent Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) standard. We also engage with stakeholders and industry platforms to drive leadership and commitments on critical environmental and social issues in the sector. Our work in aquaculture aims to increase climate resilience of seafood, blue food security, a nature positive future, and the well-being of coastal communities and seafood workers.

Bringing transparency to feed ingredient supply chains
Together with the Global Salmon Initiative, WWF developed an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risk assessment tool designed for feed ingredient sourcing for the salmon farming sector. The tool provides a consistent framework for assessing ESG risks, such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, and human rights abuse, across feed ingredient supply chains, improving transparency and traceability. While initially developed for salmon farming, it has broader applications for other aquaculture species as well as livestock production sectors. By streamlining data collection and fostering collaboration, the tool helps feed companies mitigate risks and drive sustainability improvements in feed sourcing for all animal proteins.

Seaweed as animal feed additive
WWF is collaborating with scientists to explore the use of seaweed as an animal-feed additive to reduce methane emissions and improve livestock health and efficiency. Companies are developing algae-based feed for Maine dairy farmers and Danish pork producers to integrate into supply chains and boost demand for kelp farming. This collaboration aims to close research gaps and find effective ways to scale seaweed-based feed. By promoting seaweed as a low-carbon feed alternative, it could improve feed conversion, reduce antibiotic use, and lower methane emissions in ruminants, while offering a sustainable way to decrease reliance on resource-intensive crops and create new revenue streams for seaweed producers.

Dairy cows grazing a paddock on the orgainc dairy farm of Pat and Angela Mulrooney at Managanstown, Kilsheelan, Clonmel, Co.Tipperary.

Reducing the impacts of feed
As a member of the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative, we’re helping scale solutions to improve soil health and water quality on farms in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. The program is designed to meet the objectives of federal and state task forces to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous pollution in the Gulf of Mexico by 45 percent by 2035.

WWF is working with diverse stakeholders in industry and academia to reduce the impact that livestock feed has on the environment. Producing feed more sustainably and finding alternative, lower-impact feed sources—for example, micro-organisms, invasive carp, flare, and insects—can alleviate pressure on habitats that are converted for feed production as well as the use of fishmeal and oil in animal protein production.

WWF also convened a group of alternative protein start-ups to ensure knowledge-sharing and collaboration. We then engaged both feed companies and venture capitalists to allow these start-ups to better understand what would make them more competitive. We then encouraged the investors to pool their money to invest in several start-ups.

We also worked with the US dairy industry to reduce enteric fermentation in animals and manure. Toward that end, we served as judges, ran competitions, and supported efforts to reduce GHG emissions by up to 75%. Through this work, we have demonstrated how dairy can capture not only methane and RNG from biogas digestors but also capture liquid ammonia and NPK from substrates. This has resulted in four controlled case studies of dairies around the US to see how the systems would need to be adjusted to roll out the work nationally.

We served as judges when Rabobank, Nutreco, and ID Capital needed an environmental lens for products in start-up competitions. In 2005, we developed a set of environmental targets for the Brazilian poultry industry which challenged them to reduce their key impacts by half, achieving one (on water use) in less than a year. The initiative was so successful that we were asked to do the same for Brazilian pork in 2007.

Making the business case
Environmentally sustainable practices must also be economically sustainable, or else they won’t be around for long. WWF is developing business cases and other research to demonstrate the economic value of environmental sustainability. We have documented the benefits of improved efficiency in production, land rehabilitation, sustainable intensification, and the use of innovative financial tools, such as long-term contracts, to help producers make the investments required to become more sustainable and profitable.

Advocating for strong conservation policies
Farmers and ranchers are already proving that we can meet future demand for food in general and animal protein without sacrificing our environment; what we need now are policies that encourage them to do so. WWF advocates for USDA conservation programs that give producers the incentives they need to make sustainability economically viable.

In addition, market-based strategies alone will not address all of the key impacts of animal protein and feed production globally, especially because the biggest environmental impacts and the lowest production levels come from the poorest performing producers. Markets will not move them, but governments can and must. Building consensus among private sector and civil society actors can help move government in the right direction.

What you can do

If we’re going to reduce the environmental impacts of food production, consumers must get involved, too. Here are five simple steps you can take today.

  • Consume mindfully. Consumers in the US should consider the environmental impacts of the foods they choose. By eating a balanced diet, following nutritional recommendations, and reducing overconsumption, people can maintain a more sustainable environmental footprint.
  • Reduce waste. About 40%of all the food that’s produced globally is lost or wasted—several times what’s needed to feed every malnourished person on the planet. By reducing food waste, we can provide food for more people while limiting its environmental impacts on the planet.
  • Shop more sustainably. Consumers should look for food items that are certified as more sustainable by independent organizations. By choosing certified or more sustainable foods, you can send a message to your favorite grocery stores and brands that sustainability matters to you.
  • Get to know farmers and ranchers. Most Americans are generations removed from farms. By visiting with nearby farmers and ranchers or your local farmer’s market, people can begin to understand how agriculture can serve as a tool for conservation. And with greater understanding and personal relationships, we can begin to share in the challenge of producing and consuming food more sustainably.
  • Advocate for strong conservation policies. Congress and the Administration have a lot of influence over our food system and its impact on nature. You can get involved in the process. Ask your members of Congress to support policies that help farmers and ranchers conserve wildlife and grasslands while producing food.

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