Finding information about meat isn’t really hard. If you’re involved and interested in the livestock sector, it is likely reflected in your news and social media feeds. You’re inundated with content about beef and other animal-sourced foods through social media, podcasts, newsletters and even face-to-face conversations. In fact, instead of calling those 60 minutes spent on social media before bed “doomscrolling,” some of us should call it “mooscrolling,” as the social algorithms deliver bovine post after bovine post. It is the life we live, and for the most part, it’s a good one.
And while that is true, it doesn’t mean everyone’s social and news feed look the same. Those algorithms have herded us into pens of tailored content and chained the gate, generating a sense of tribalism around interests that at times become part of our identity. You see and like posts about cows, so you will see more posts about cows. A solid amount of the livestock content that fills our social feeds is informational, entertaining and relevant, but is it reaching audiences outside of agriculture?
I spend my time in the CLEAR (Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research) Center at UC – Davis sharing information about animal agriculture’s impact on the environment. It’s a charged space, to say the least. We try to bring nuance to the discussion around cattle and climate, and know firsthand how difficult it can be to break through the misinformation around the topic and reach people outside of agriculture.
If you want to read a high-quality and relevant story about livestock, for example, you go to an outlet such as the one you’re reading now, or you follow someone knowledgeable on social media. To put it plainly, you pay attention to people who know what they’re talking about. They have lived part of their life in the agricultural space and understand the nuances that make it up. But how many people outside of cattlemen and cattlewomen read this publication? Take that number and compare it to how many people read The New York Times, which has written several articles on cattle’s impact on the environment in recent years. There is a wide gap between those numbers, telling us that most people who read about cattle are reading about it from a publication that hasn’t had a dedicated agriculture reporter in a number of years. And I can tell you from experience, those aren’t all complete articles.
When it comes to learning about livestock and the environment, we have an accessibility problem. The stories non-agricultural people are reading or watching lack nuance and context. This is because outlets creating content for the general public have non-agricultural people compiling them from places like New York City or Washington, D.C. This leads to stories that may be interesting in some ways, but aren’t very deep. You get stories that try to portray agricultural topics as black and white, when there is so much of it that is shades of gray. How many times have you read a story about agriculture in a mainstream outlet and thought it was missing information?
Entertainment has become a key driver and motivator for content creation. As a result, we’ve lost the fact-driven, nuanced discussions that conversations around livestock and sustainability require. The mainstream media has discovered that doom-and-gloom cow stories drive cheap clicks to their website when it emphasizes and exaggerates their climate and environmental footprint. It’s not a coincidence that when you see one story bashing livestock, several others follow. But what it really says is that people want to read and learn about the food they eat. They’re not necessarily clicking on those articles because of their negativity, but because they’re hungry for information.
Stories and videos that are thoughtful and full of context are having a tough time reaching the general public. Digital and cultural gatekeeping exists that is keeping high-quality stories about agriculture from reaching beyond the farm. As a result, content that is at best misinformed and at worst intentionally misleading dominates news cycles and social feeds for those simply curious about the livestock sector.
So how do we fix that?
We need more quality, fact-driven content to feed the public. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of people telling the right story, and a lot of that content is coming from producers or people in allied industries. Sure, some of the public will say those groups have a biased view of agriculture, but they also have a real view of it. One that is rooted in a perspective not many have these days. They are, simply put, subject matter experts. All of that is true and should be considered.
We also need to make sure the information about animal agriculture that is shared is relevant to audiences. That means it needs to be clear, factual and accessible. I’m not saying content needs to be short or dumbed down, but that what you share makes sense to someone whose only experience with ranching is watching Yellowstone.
It also needs to be correct. As an academic research center that also emphasizes communications, the CLEAR Center at UC – Davis strives to make information digestible to broad audiences, but also provide content that is rooted in science. Getting something wrong or not being clear enough will derail any conversation you have, even if it is with the best intentions.
You also need to be having discussions where people are. How we get our news and content these days is much different than it was just 10 years ago. But it is an opportunity. You can have as much reach as a mainstream publication on your own channels. At the least, you should be amplifying and sharing content from other content producers so that good information can make it into others’ social and news feeds.
While there is a lot of misinformation around cattle, there is a lot of opportunity to provide content that is accurate and nuanced for large audiences as people get their information from untraditional sources. And, just maybe, many people may like switching from doomscrolling to mooscrolling.
The UC – Davis CLEAR Center is focused on improving sustainability in animal agriculture with research and science communication. Read more about the CLEAR Center and find information about cattle and the environment at the website.
