He’s an Outspoken Defender of Meat. Industry Funds His Research, Files Show

"A UC Davis professor runs an academic center that was conceived by a trade group, according to records, and gets most of its funding from farming interests."

"In 2019, three dozen leading researchers sounded a stark warning in a prominent scientific journal: To fight climate change and improve human health, the world needed to dramatically cut back on eating red meat.

The findings were quickly attacked by Frank Mitloehner, the head of an agricultural research center at the University of California, Davis, and a prominent critic of the journal’s research.

The report’s authors were spreading a “radical anti-meat agenda,” Dr. Mitloehner wrote on Twitter, where he led a backlash under the hashtag, #yes2meat. “Their so-called planetary diet is a quasi-vegan diet,” he said, calling the findings “anti-livestock.”

According to internal University of California documents reviewed by The New York Times, Dr. Mitloehner’s academic group, the Clear Center at UC Davis, receives almost all its funding from industry donations and coordinates with a major livestock lobby group on messaging campaigns."

Hiroko Tabuchi reports for the New York Times October 31, 2022.

Source: NYTimes, 11/01/2022