Professor Frank Mitloehner runs an academic center at the University of California, Davis, that The New York Times reports was conceived by a trade group, and gets most of its funding from farming interests.

Mitloehner is giving public lectures at Lincoln University next Monday and Victoria University next Tuesday. Beef + Lamb’s promotional material describes Mitloehner as “an international GHG [greenhouse gas] communicator” and internationally renowned expert.

Dr. Mitloehner’s academic group, the Clear Center, receives almost all its funding from industry donations and coordinates with a major livestock lobby group on messaging campaigns.

Greenpeace U.K. investigated the centre, using freedom of information laws, and found that it was set up in 2019 with a $2.9 million gift to be paid out over several years from the nonprofit arm of the American Feed Industry Association. The centre has also received more than $350,000 from other industry or corporate sources, including nearly $200,000 from the California Cattle Council, a regional livestock industry group.

Critics have pointed out that close financial ties between a research center and the industry it studies create the potential for conflict of interest.

Matthew Hayek, an assistant professor in environmental studies at New York University, told The New York Times that industry funding doesn’t necessarily compromise research, “But it does inevitably have a slant on the directions with which you ask questions and the tendency to interpret those results in a way that may favor industry.

“Almost everything that I’ve seen from Dr. Mitloehner’s communications has downplayed every impact of livestock,” he said. “His communications are discordant from the scientific consensus, and the evidence that he has brought to bear against that consensus has not been, in my eyes, sufficient to challenge it.”

One of Mitloehner’s NZ talks will focus on “the science behind methane’s impact on climate change including warming and the role of GWP [global warming potential]”.

However Mitloehner’s views on methane’s warming potential have been controversial. The New York Times reported that Mitloehner’s research centre planned a nine-month informational campaign in 2020 titled “Rethink Methane.” The campaign argued that, because methane is a relatively short-lived greenhouse gas (once it’s in the atmosphere, it becomes less potent as the years go by), cattle would not cause additional warming as long as their numbers did not grow.

It's a live debate in New Zealand as well, with Auckland University scientist Kevin Trenberth arguing much the same in an article for The Conversation last week

The argument leans on a method developed by scientists that aims to better account for the global-warming effects of short-lived greenhouse gases like methane. However, the use of that method by an industry "as a way of justifying high current emissions is very inappropriate," Drew Shindell, professor of earth science at Duke University and the lead author of a landmark United Nations report on methane emissions, told The New York Times.

Agricultural corporations and lobby groups spent more than $150 million in 2021 lobbying the United States government - with a key lobbying focus of limiting environmental regulations. 

In a Sentient Media article titled Money and Miscommunication: The Case of Frank Mitloehner, Jenny Splitter writes that the problem with Mitloehner’s centre is that “it’s not really a research lab. It’s mostly — or maybe entirely — a communications project.”

“Mitloehner’s misleading communications — both at CLEAR and on his own — have always been the problem. It’s the speeches, videos, blog posts, interviews and tweets that downplay the extent and seriousness of the role livestock plays in increasing climate pollution. And Mitloehner has significant influence.”