Is food and drink doing a U-turn on sustainability?

Sustainability U-turns: overview

• JBS’s decision to drop its net zero target has reignited debate over corporate sustainability commitments
• PepsiCo, Morrisons and others have also revised or delayed environmental goals in recent years
• Companies cite supply chain emissions, infrastructure gaps, costs and regulatory complexity as key barriers
• Experts say many businesses are shifting from ambitious pledges to more measurable, achievable targets
• Despite some rollbacks, sustainability remains a commercial priority for many brands, investors and consumers

Meat giant JBS sparked backlash in July when it confirmed it would axe its 2040 net zero target.

The world’s largest beef and poultry producer included the changes in its latest sustainability report. Reduction goals for its Scope 3 emissions were absent too.

The move triggered a heated response from charities and NGOs who accused the ‘Big Ag villain’ of a track record of ‘shirking corporate transparency and peddling empty promises’.

But JBS has insisted it isn’t ‘walking away’ from sustainability, with plans to strengthen its framework instead to better reflect the ‘immense’ execution challenges of cutting carbon from an $86.2bn ag business.

It isn’t the only major food and drink business to scale back on ambitious sustainability commitments in the past two years, with a number of leading retailers and suppliers quietly making changes to those headline-grabbing targets that won them plaudits at the start of the decade.

So are we seeing an industry U-turn when it comes to sustainability commitments? If so, why? Or – as JBS say – is this less of a retreat and more of an attempt at refining what’s really possible?

Scaling back

JBS might be unusual in removing its net zero commitment completely, but plenty of other food and drink firms have adjusted or scaled back sustainability targets.

In May 2025, PepsiCo watered down a number of its key commitments on climate, water and packaging. Its 2040 net zero target was pushed back to ‘2050 or sooner’ while its goal on Scope 1 was changed from a 75% cut by 2030 to 61% the same year. It had also previously targeted a 20% reduction in virgin plastic use by 2030, relative to 2020. It’s now striving for a 2% year-on-year reduction to that date instead.

The supplier blamed a lack of infrastructure and regulatory support for the changes. “We can advocate, we can collaborate, we can work to try and move forward,” said chief sustainability officer Jim Andrew. “But there’s only so much that we can do.”

Also in 2025, UK supermarket chain Morrisons postponed its own net zero carbon emission targets, delaying them by 15 years to 2050, though it did say the altered commitment had bigger scope, covering the whole supply chain.

And in October that year, Nestlé exited the Dairy Methane Action Alliance, less than two years after joining the initiative designed to reduce methane emissions in the dairy sector. The company didn’t specify reasons for leaving.

“Quiet scaling back on net zero appears to be becoming more common, particularly where companies have set ambitious targets without a clear implementation pathway,” says Lindsay Groves, a senior consultant specialising in the food and drink industry at Consultus Sustainability.

And when those with the scale and profile of JBS make these moves it risks setting a precedent, she warns. “Companies in that position need to show that they are doing everything reasonably possible to reduce emissions, even where delivery is difficult. If major businesses respond to delivery challenges by deprioritising net zero, it risks signalling to the wider supply chain that climate commitments are optional rather than strategic.”

But, say experts, some of these changes also reflect far greater pragmatism and knowledge when it comes to understanding what it takes to move the needle on sustainability.

“The sector is becoming more selective, rather than uniformly less ambitious,” says Polly Milne, COO at ESG platform FuturePlus. “We’ve certainly seen a retreat by some larger F&B companies away from headline-grabbing ESG promises, particularly around long-term climate targets. But on the flip side, we’re seeing this combined with an increased focus on measurable, material and operational priorities.”

‘Execution challenges’

Environmental commitments from food and drink firms really hit their peak around 2020 and 2021. A year prior, the UN had officially unveiled its ‘Business Ambition for 1.5°C’ campaign, with an initial cohort of 87 major companies pledging to reach net zero by 2050.

Then came COVID-19, sparking debate on how to create a more resilient post-pandemic economy, with global policy slogans like ‘Build Back Better’. The result was a proliferation of headline-grabbing commitments from multinational firms.

But “many of the headline commitments made earlier this decade were set before companies really understood their carbon emissions or worked out the capital, supplier engagement, and operational changes required to deliver them”, says George Wade, CCO at carbon management platform Zevero.

This is particularly evident in food and drink, he points out, where Scope 3 emissions – indirect emissions arising from the full breadth of a company’s supply chain, including ingredients, packaging, transport and retail – can account for as much as 99% of a company’s total carbon footprint. “Once companies begin measuring those emissions properly, the scale of the challenge becomes much clearer,” he says.

That seems to ring true for JBS. The company had already faced legal challenges around its clear lack of a plan despite such a bold commitment. Years prior to shelving its net zero goal, the New York Attorney General had filed a lawsuit against JBS’s US subsidiary for misleading the public about its sustainability commitments with ‘no actual plans’ to achieve its stated goal on net zero. The case was settled in November last year for $1.1m.

In a July statement, its chief sustainability officer Jason Weller said that the further the team got toward executing its net zero plans, the clearer it became that the goal “spanning hundreds of thousands of independent agricultural producers across tens of millions of hectares in dozens of countries — each with different practices, different baselines, and no standardised measurement infrastructure — is an immense challenge”.

Similarly, when Coca Cola scaled back its targets on packaging in 2024, it flagged challenges around implementation. In attempting to increase recycled content in primary plastic, glass and aluminium packaging, for example, the company cited challenges around cost, quality and scaling. On recycling, it said a fragmented infrastructure, with different models in different markets, was proving difficult.

And PepsiCo has insisted the changes to its own plans have been guided by “four years of learnings” since launching sustainability strategy Pep+ in 2021, with the reworked framework designed for the long-term. “Our goals must evolve with us to keep our ambition and to deliver on our long-term vision,” said chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta.

Coupled with these execution challenges has been inflation, competing demands for capital, political uncertainty, changing reporting requirements and poor supplier data, says Wade.

“Companies are also having to reassess their public claims amid changing disclosure rules and anti-greenwashing scrutiny,” adds Milne. Legislation such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) is creating “a strong incentive to reassess environmental claims.

The EU’s Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive also comes into effect in September, introducing new rules around how businesses are legally able to communicate their sustainability credentials to consumers.

Sustainability as a commercial driver

None of this marks the end to ambitious green strategies in food and drink, however. This year already, Carlsberg unveiled its updated ‘Brewing Tomorrow’ ESG programme, with an elevated ambition to reduce absolute rather than relative carbon emissions, and new targets around social sustainability such as employee inclusion.

Danone also laid out new sustainability goals in April, the second phase of its Impact Journey, and the first phase of which has seen it reduce CO₂ emissions by 21% since 2020. Additions include new plans to expand regenerative agriculture within its supply chain, with plans to source 45% of ingredients from farms with regenerative practices by the end of the decade.

Across smaller operators, which make up an increasing proportion of food and drink brands, there’s widespread commitment to a more sustainable way of doing things, insists Orr Vinegold, co-founder of B2C impact accelerator Unrest.

“Across the 15 food and beverage businesses we’ve invested in, we haven’t seen a widespread quiet scaling back of sustainability commitments,” he says. “In fact, around 60% – nine of the 15 – are doubling down.

“The political climate may have become less receptive to sustainability, and some investors may no longer see it as such a fashionable topic, but consumer demand has always been the more important force,” he points out. “People continue to vote with their wallets, and the businesses in our portfolio that have stayed most committed to their mission are also among the fastest-growing, winning new distribution and building highly engaged customer communities.”

Investors too continue to prioritise more sustainable firms, says Milne. One PwC survey found that 78% of investors say that verifiable sustainability metrics directly influence how they engage with a company.

Strengthening scrutiny

As some food and drink firms re-evaluate and review sustainability targets, adjusting timelines and shifting priorities based on a challenging market, the frameworks that hold them to account do need to be strengthened,

“Current reporting frameworks are improving, but they are not sufficient on their own,” says Wade. “The GHG Protocol provides a common accounting language, SBTi assesses whether targets align with climate science, CDP supports disclosure, and standards such as the ISSB IFRS S2 are improving global comparability.

“The direction of travel is encouraging, but standards only create accountability when companies report consistently, obtain appropriate assurance and face scrutiny when performance diverges from their claims.”

“To separate genuine progress from greenwashing, the industry must shift away from annual, self-certified snapshots and move toward longitudinal, primary-evidence-verified tracking,” adds Mine. “A company shouldn’t just be judged on what it promises to do by 2030, but on the verified, incremental operational steps it is taking and documenting month-by-month.”