It’s now well established that for decades, major oil companies knew that burning fossil fuels would cause global warming, and yet did everything in their power to obstruct climate policy. They intensively lobbied policymakers, ran advertising campaigns, and funded think tanks to cast doubt on climate science.

According to two new papers recently published in the journals Environmental Research Letters and Climate Policy, another industry knew of its role in climate change decades ago and engaged in similar tactics: the US beef industry.

The story begins in February 1989, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a workshop for a report on how to reduce livestock methane emissions. Experts at the time knew that cattle produce significant amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that accelerates climate change at a much faster pace than carbon dioxide. (Today, almost one-third of methane stems from beef and dairy cattle).

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There was also increasing awareness among scientists and environmentalists about livestock’s impact on other environmental issues, like water pollution and biodiversity loss.

A representative from the nation’s largest and oldest beef industry group — the National Cattlemen’s Association (NCA) — attended the EPA workshop, and soon after, an arm of the organization began crafting a plan to defend itself against what they anticipated would be growing attacks over beef’s role in global warming and other environmental ills.

The Cattlemen’s plan — an internal 17-page memo titled “

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