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As it works hard to control the media narrative, Canadian Beef surely doesn’t want me to tell you that its new ads — currently running on CBC, featuring wholesome farmers, green pastures and happy cows they say are good for the environment — are selling you a farming fantasy.

They surely don’t want me to tell you the true story: that beef remains a major climate offender, and that behind the curated image of “responsible” ranching lies a reality of eco-harm and animal suffering. 

This persistent promotion of beef comes as consumption of it , driven in part by growing awareness of the climate toll of animal farming — particularly cattle — the health risks associated with meat-heavy diets, the  and of course the rising cost of beef.

So a new farming tale is being told, of carbon capturing cows and ranchers as “caretakers” of the land — a narrative that is amplified by  some politicians and documentaries like the star-studded . The romantic idea is that a simple switch from factory farmed cattle — you know, those ones confined to massive feedlots in Western Canada — to animals raised on idyllic pastures, can make eating steak a-okay again. 

Except, it’s not that simple. Though it is familiar. “The meat industry is following the classic playbook,” used by other damaging industries like Big Oil and Big Tobacco, says Nicholas Carter, environmental researcher and co-founder of the Institute for Future Food Systems. “It is fuelling cultural divides and spinning deception to delay the inevitable shift away from arguably the most environmentally damaging human practice.”

To be clear, nearly all cattle raised for beef in Canada begin their lives grazing on grass. However, around  to crowded, barren feedlots, where they are fed grain to be rapidly fattened for early slaughter. (Of course almost 100 per cent are also eventually stabbed in the throat).

Factory farming exists because raising cattle exclusively on pasture is simply not doable at current rates of beef consumption. For example, regenerative farming requires about 2.5 times more land than conventional farming. That equates to millions of acres beyond what is already being ravaged for animal agriculture, “already the single largest human use of land on the planet,” says Carter.

The only way to actually switch all Canadian beef to pasture raised, grass-fed, regenerative (or whatever virtuous buzzword makes you feel better) is if everyone ate way, way less of it. But we don’t see that messaging from the meatfluencers or Canadian Beef, do we?

The inconvenient truth is that animal farming is a major driver of ecosystem decline and climate change. And a  found that when animal farming was removed or excluded from an area, the natural biodiversity thrived. This is known as rewilding — a true eco and climate solution. 

Regenerative grazing and grass-fed beef, on the other hand, have been overhyped and co-opted by Big Meat as a pretty and powerful marketing ploy. The carbon sequestration powers of grazing cattle, it turns out, are . Grass-fed cows also emit more greenhouse gases than those on factory farms. And Canada is still butchering over 3 million of these sentient animals every year (among over 840 million total land animals). 

But the meat industry doesn’t want you to see those numbers. It only wants you to see bucolic beef, filtered through Instagram and your TV screen, in all its greenwashed and humanewashed glory.