The headline “comes from” last month's ruling in the first climate-related court case in Denmark.
Europe's largest pork producer has admitted that, in claiming the meat it produces is “more climate-friendly than you think”, it breached trading legislation.
In March, the Western High Court of Denmark ruled that Danish Crown had misled consumers. The case was brought by two non-governmental organisations and became the country's first piece of climate litigation.
Representatives of the Danish Vegetarian Society and the Climate Movement association secured a partial victory in court on 1 March. The Western High Court (Western High Court) agreed with the claimants that the company should not have placed stickers on its product packaging stating that the pigs were “climate-controlled”.
The court dismissed the NGOs' second claim, that the company's marketing slogan “Danish pork is more climate-friendly than you think” amounted to greenwashing (greenwashing). After representatives of the NGOs sought to appeal that part of the ruling to the kingdom's Supreme Court, Danish Crown admitted that it had not complied with marketing rules.
Celebrating the “great victory”, as the NGOs' lawyer Marc Stounberg (Marc Stounberg) put it, the non-governmental organisations hope the case will resonate both in Denmark and elsewhere in the world.
Can pork be described as “climate-friendly”?
Denmark has more pigs than people. Belonging to the former species is “highly lethal”. Every year, tens of millions of animals are slaughtered in Danish abattoirs. Most of the meat is exported to other European Union countries.
Danish Crown is owned by several thousand Danish farmers and is the largest meat processing company in Europe. The company has committed to sustainability principles, which its opponents consider impossible, since meat production generates large volumes of carbon dioxide emissions. According to climate scientists, pork is the third largest source of emissions among foods of animal origin, after beef and cow's milk.
“Pork production is very harmful to the climate, particularly because millions of pigs are fed on soya, and growing it in the quantities required means forests are cleared over vast areas,” stresses Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl, secretary general of the Danish Vegetarian Society, adding: “Meat production should be reduced, more trees should be planted and forests restored, in order to buy time and halt the dramatic climate change we are all facing.”
Are the pork products made by Danish Crown a case of greenwashing?
The non-governmental organisations claimed that Danish Crown had engaged in greenwashing in the way it described its pork products, namely that the company labelled the products with round pink stickers stating that the meat came from “climate-controlled pigs”.
The Western High Court of Denmark ruled that the labelling had not been subject to independent verification and that this made it harder for the average consumer to make an informed decision. The accuracy of the claim's content could not be checked, and the court explained that the stickers could “materially distort” people's economic behaviour. The claim that “Danish pork is more climate-friendly than you think”, however, was harder for the NGOs' lawyers to challenge, because it is subjective. The court referred to a report indicating that Danes found it difficult to assess how polluting pork is. Most shoppers rated it much the same as beef.
Danish Crown stopped using ecological labels on its products in 2021. In a statement published on the company's website on 12 April 2024, its representatives said they were “responding positively” to the NGOs' claims:
“Danish Crown accepts that the use of the above advertising slogans did not meet the requirements of the Marketing Act. The company accepts a prohibition on any further use of this advertising in any marketing activity.”
Meat marketing faces ever tighter scrutiny
As climate problems intensify, European countries are cracking down on “environmentally friendly” claims by polluting companies and considering new measures to curb emissions.
The Danish government is debating a CO₂ tax on livestock farming (Danish Crown opposes the proposal).
On the other side of the Atlantic, New York State Attorney General Letitia James (Letitia James) has brought a lawsuit against JBS, the world's largest meat producer, over false climate-related claims.
“Danish Crown admits that it backed a mass advertising campaign that made its climate-damaging products appear more climate-friendly, or ‘greener’, than they really are,” stresses Frederik Roland Sandby, secretary general of the Danish Climate Movement. “I hope many companies will follow this example, so that we can create a fair market in which climate-damaging products such as pork are not advertised as ‘climate-friendly’.”
In its statement of 12 April, Danish Crown explained its decision: “Ever since the claim was brought before the court, we have stressed that it is very important for us and for the entire business community to be able to communicate about the climate measures we have taken, in order to stand out positively and to steer climate efforts in a direction that is favourable to business. We still believe that.”
“At the same time, the long and thorough process of hearing the case at the Western High Court has prompted both healthy reflection and useful discussion about how and when a company should communicate about sustainability.”