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industrial agriculture
Oreo’s Sweet Image Hides a Bitter Truth About Forests and Human Rights
Oreo may seem harmless. But when palm oil is sourced from destroyed rainforest or land taken without consent, the cost is not just environmental—it is human.
Feb 19, 2026
Oreo is marketed as “milk’s favorite cookie.” But behind that familiar blue package is a supply chain tied to rainforest destruction and violence against the people who defend their land.
Mondelēz International, the corporate giant that makes Oreo, has built a global snack empire worth nearly $40 billion a year. Its products line grocery shelves across the country. What most consumers never see is the palm oil that goes into those products—or the damage connected to its production.
Palm oil expansion remains one of the leading drivers of tropical deforestation. It is also linked to land grabs, intimidation, and violence against Indigenous and local communities who resist losing their forests.
According to Rainforest Action Network’s 2025 Keep Forests Standing Scorecard, Mondelēz ranked last among major consumer goods companies on deforestation and human rights safeguards. The company scored just 4 out of 24 possible points. Most alarming, it received zero points for having a public policy protecting Human Rights Defenders—people who face threats, criminalization, and violence for standing up to destructive development.
Communities should not be displaced for cookies.
Between 2015 and 2024, more than 6,400 attacks and over 1,000 killings of land and environmental defenders were documented worldwide. Industrial agriculture is a major driver of this violence.
These defenders are farmers, Indigenous leaders, journalists, teachers, and community members. They are protecting forests that stabilize the climate, regulate rainfall, and support biodiversity found nowhere else on Earth. They are also protecting their homes.
Mondelēz has been exposed more than once for sourcing palm oil linked to illegal deforestation in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem—often called the “Orangutan Capital of the World.” The Leuser region is one of the last places on Earth where critically endangered species including rhinos, elephants, tigers, and orangutans still coexist in the wild. It is also home to Indigenous communities who depend on intact forests for survival.
Satellite monitoring continues to show forest loss in protected areas within this ecosystem. That means safeguards are failing.
Mondelēz promotes its “Snacking Made Right” campaign as proof of sustainability leadership. But marketing language does not stop chainsaws. Without enforceable policies and independent monitoring, companies continue to profit while forests fall.
The absence of a Human Rights Defender policy is not a minor oversight. It sends a message through the supply chain that violence and intimidation are not red lines. When corporations fail to adopt zero-tolerance policies against threats and criminalization, suppliers operate with fewer consequences.
This is not just about environmental damage. It is about whether communities have the right to say no when their land is targeted for development. It is about Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. It is about whether corporate profit outweighs human safety.
Deforestation is accelerating the climate crisis. Tropical rainforests absorb carbon and cool the planet. When they are cleared, that stored carbon is released, intensifying global warming. From stronger hurricanes to prolonged droughts and wildfires, the effects are already visible.
Corporations that rely on forest-risk commodities have the power to change this trajectory. Mondelēz could require full traceability for its palm oil supply. It could suspend suppliers linked to deforestation or violence. It could adopt a clear, public Human Rights Defender policy with zero tolerance for intimidation and criminalization. It could require proof that communities have granted Free, Prior, and Informed Consent before land is developed.
Instead, it continues business as usual.
Oreo may seem harmless. But when palm oil is sourced from destroyed rainforest or land taken without consent, the cost is not just environmental—it is human.
Communities should not be displaced for cookies. Forest defenders should not risk their lives so multinational corporations can maintain margins.
Mondelēz has the size and influence to shift industry standards. What it lacks is the political will.
Protecting forests starts with protecting the people who defend them. Until companies like Mondelēz adopt enforceable policies that prioritize human rights and end deforestation in their supply chains, their sustainability claims will ring hollow.
Consumers deserve snacks that do not come at the expense of forests and communities. And the people risking their lives to protect the planet deserve more than silence from the corporations profiting from their land.
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Behind the USDA's Regenerative Rhetoric Lurks Business as Usual
Secretary Rollins praises American farmers’ independence while advancing policies that strip them of market protections and empower their largest competitors.
Dec 23, 2025
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, in her recent USA Today and Newsweek opinion pieces, has worked hard to present herself as a champion of American farmers and a steward of healthier food options. Alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., she spoke of the values these farmers embody—independence, grit, patriotism—and celebrated a $700 million regenerative agriculture initiative as proof that this administration is delivering for rural America.
But if you pull back the curtain on Secretary Rollins and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the narrative changes. What looks like a bold vision for “regeneration” quickly reveals itself as a political performance designed to distract from the USDA’s business-as-usual that props up industrial agriculture, not family farmers.
Secretary Rollins held up Alexandre Family Farm as the face of America’s regenerative future. But the truth: The farm is under scrutiny for animal abuse so severe it stands in direct contradiction to everything regenerative agriculture represents.
A USDA investigation obtained through the Freedom of Information Act documented multiple violations of organic and animal-welfare standards. The company has since admitted to serious abuses—including cows dragged with machinery, horn-tipping without pain relief, a teat cut off an animal with mastitis, diesel poured on animals, and animals dying after being left without adequate feed and care. No amount of marketing can turn that into regeneration. It is factory farming with better lighting.
A healthy America requires new, bold regenerative policies, not branding.
Choosing that farm as the model for USDA’s regenerative agenda signals to large industrial livestock companies that even amid serious animal cruelty, the USDA will still hand them a spotlight—and, in many cases, more public dollars. It also sends a message to the farmers Secretary Rollins claims to represent: Their government will not reward those who do the hard, unglamorous work of true regenerative agriculture. Instead, it will reward those who invest in scale, branding, and access, not better practices.
Secretary Rollins frequently praised states as “laboratories of innovation,” a sentiment that should have encouraged rural communities. Yet she is pushing the EATS Act and its twin, the Save Our Bacon Act—federal preemption bills that would wipe out states’ ability to regulate for safer, healthier, and more humane agricultural products sold within their borders. Notably, EATS and SOBA face bipartisan opposition from more than 200 senators and representatives in Congress.
You cannot celebrate state innovation while trying to make it illegal.
Backed by the factory-farm-aligned National Pork Producers Council, both bills would undermine more than 1,000 state health, safety, and animal-welfare laws. These bills would give the largest global agribusinesses the power to override local standards and flood American markets with cheap, low-welfare meat. And they would directly undercut the regenerative and higher-welfare family farms she claims to support.
The USDA’s $700 million regenerative package reveals the same pattern. In reality, it is a drop in the bucket. For decades, federal policy has pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation’s largest factory farms. From 2018 to 2023 alone, the top 10,000 livestock feeding operations—mostly CAFOs—captured more than $12 billion in federal aid. The largest 10% of producers now take nearly 80% of subsidies, while small and midsize farms receive nothing.
Secretary Rollins knows this—yet her policies do nothing to change it.
The contradiction is glaring: She praises American farmers’ independence while advancing policies that strip them of market protections and empower their largest competitors. She leads an agency that celebrates rural resilience while continuing to concentrate power and resources in the hands of giant corporations.
True regenerative agriculture—the kind practiced by real farm families—requires pasture, biodiversity, humane animal treatment, and a financial landscape where independent farmers can survive. But these farmers are forced to compete against industrial operations that are more heavily subsidized and are now welcomed to call themselves “regenerative” regardless of their animal handling and herd-management practices.
Across the United States, regenerative ranchers, pasture-based dairies, higher-welfare hog farmers, and diversified small producers are already showing what a healthier and more resilient US food system can look like. Consumers want this shift. States are supporting it. Rural communities depend on it. Yet the USDA continues to position factory farming as the American standard—and now as the regenerative standard.
If this administration truly wants to protect American farmers, the path forward is clear.
Stop calling industrial operations regenerative when they are not. Stop pushing federal legislation that handcuffs states and abandons small producers. Stop directing billions toward industrial livestock giants while offering pennies to the people doing the real work of regeneration. And start listening—to independent farmers fighting consolidation, rural communities bearing the cost of industrial expansion, and consumers demanding humane treatment of animals.
A healthy America requires new, bold regenerative policies, not branding. We welcome Secretary Rollins to bring forward those types of policies.
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The $2 Billion Question: Is World Bank’s IFC Enabling Environmental Damage?
The troubling question isn't whether IFC has environmental policies. It does; the question is whether these policies mean anything when clients consistently fail to comply and the public can't verify whether promised improvements ever materialize.
Dec 14, 2025
When the International Finance Corporation, or IFC—the World Bank's private-sector lending arm—invests in developing countries, it promises to uphold rigorous environmental safeguards. But our new analysis of $2 billion in livestock investments reveals an alarming gap between policy and practice that should concern anyone who cares about climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental accountability.
Between 2020 and 2025, the IFC pumped nearly $2 billion into 38 industrial meat, dairy, and feed projects across developing countries. These investments expanded factory farming operations at a time when scientific consensus highlights the urgency of transitioning away from industrial livestock production to protect both people and planet.
The troubling question isn't whether IFC has environmental policies. It does—robust ones, in fact, that 56 other development banks and 130 financial institutions use as benchmarks. The question is whether these policies mean anything when clients consistently fail to comply and the public can't verify whether promised improvements ever materialize.
The Compliance Crisis
Our latest report, Unsustainable Investment Part 2, analyzed publicly disclosed environmental risk assessment summaries for all 38 projects, evaluating whether IFC clients adhered to the bank's own requirements for managing biodiversity loss, pollution, and resource use. The findings are sobering.
On biodiversity, most projects offered superficial habitat assessments without the detailed analysis needed to identify critical or natural habitats. Not a single project demonstrated deliberate avoidance of high-value ecosystems—the most important step in preventing irreversible damage. Out of 10 projects facing supply-chain risks from habitat conversion, only 2 reported plans to establish traceability and transition away from destructive suppliers. This matters because industrial livestock threatens over 21,000 species and is the primary driver of deforestation globally.
Without transparent, ongoing disclosure, environmental safeguards become little more than paperwork exercises.
For pollution, the gaps were equally stark. Only one project assessed both ambient conditions and cumulative impacts as required. A few projects also reported exceeding national and international standards for air emissions and wastewater discharge at the time of approval. While many promised future improvements, there's no public evidence these promises were kept. Meanwhile, 29 projects provided no reporting whatsoever on solid waste management compliance—a glaring gap in transparency.
On resource use, the patterns continued. Only one project applied the full water use reduction hierarchy, with most reporting no evidence of even attempting to avoid unnecessary water consumption. This inefficiency is staggering: Industrial livestock uses 33-40% of agriculture's water to produce just 18% of the world's calories.
These findings build on our first Unsustainable Investment report examining client adherence to climate change related requirements. The gaps in adherence to disclosure and mitigation requirements were significant—despite IFC's commitment to align 100% of new investments with the Paris Agreement starting June 2026. For disclosure, while 68% of clients disclosed emissions, the reporting was highly inconsistent. Some reported only Scope 1 or Scope 2; others aggregated both scopes when they should have been separated. For mitigation, over 60% of projects failed to reduce emissions intensity below national averages. And zero projects—out of all 38—managed physical climate risks in their supply chains, despite industrial livestock's extreme vulnerability to climate change.
The Transparency Problem
Perhaps the most concerning discovery is what we couldn't find: evidence of what happens after approval.
IFC's Environmental and Social Action Plans outline corrective measures that clients legally commit to implement over time. Many projects included plans to install pollution controls, improve resource efficiency, or enhance biodiversity management. But IFC doesn't systematically report whether these measures were actually implemented or whether they proved effective.
This absence of verification creates a dangerous accountability vacuum. Without transparent, ongoing disclosure, environmental safeguards become little more than paperwork exercises—compliance theater that manages reputational risk rather than environmental impact.
The Systemic Stakes
This matters far beyond IFC's portfolio. As the world's largest development finance institution focused on emerging economies, IFC functions as a standard setter. When IFC finances industrial livestock expansion despite weak compliance with environmental requirements, it sends a signal to global markets that such investments are "sustainable"—even when evidence suggests otherwise.
Consider the context: Industrial livestock contributes up to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, occupies 70% of agricultural land, and drives the planetary boundary transgressions that scientists warn threaten Earth's capacity to support human civilization. The World Bank's own 2024 report, Recipe for a Livable Planet, acknowledges that "to protect our planet, we need to transform the way we produce and consume food."
Yet IFC continues to invest billions in expanding the very systems the World Bank identifies as unsustainable. Civil society organizations have repeatedly documented environmental and social harms from IFC-financed factory farms in Ecuador, Brazil, China, and Mongolia—harm that occurs despite IFC's safeguards being applied.
A Path Forward
This isn't an argument against development finance. It's a call for development finance that actually delivers sustainable development.
IFC must fundamentally reassess whether industrial livestock expansion is compatible with its mission. The institution should redirect financing toward food production systems that are demonstrably sustainable—agroecological approaches, diversified farming systems, and plant-based proteins that can deliver food security without exacerbating environmental crises.
Equally urgent: IFC must mandate full, transparent disclosure of environmental compliance throughout project lifecycles—not just at approval. Independent verification and meaningful consequences for non-compliance must replace the current honor system. Without enforcement, the world's most influential environmental safeguards are effectively optional.
Billions in public development finance continue flowing to industrial operations that drive climate change, biodiversity collapse, pollution, and resource depletion.
The stakes extend beyond any single institution. With IFC's president announcing plans to double annual agribusiness investments to $9 billion by 2030, and the Paris Agreement alignment deadline now extended to June 2026, the window for course correction is rapidly closing.
As 130 financial institutions benchmark their own environmental standards against IFC's Performance Standards, the compliance failures we've documented likely exist throughout the development finance sector. Systemic problems require systemic solutions.
The Bottom Line
The evidence is clear: IFC's environmental safeguards are robust on paper but weakened by inconsistent client adherence, limited transparency, and absent enforcement. The current approach manages compliance risk rather than environmental impact—a fundamental misalignment with both IFC's stated mission and the urgent imperatives of our environmental moment.
Seven of nine planetary boundaries have already been breached. The Earth system is under unprecedented stress. Yet billions in public development finance continue flowing to industrial operations that drive climate change, biodiversity collapse, pollution, and resource depletion.
The question isn't whether IFC can afford to change course. It's whether we can afford for it not to.
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