Johns Hopkins: Animal Industry is Too Powerful

Earlier this week, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future released a report that reprimanded the animal agriculture industry’s unwillingness to reform its unsustainable health and environmental practices and the government’s failure to regulate the farming business. The Center for a Livable Future placed an emphasis on factory farming companies’ refusal to enact recommendations from a Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Production report—released five years ago—that called attention to the industry’s rampant antibiotic use, its liquid waste hazards, use of inhumane gestation crates, and the need for antitrust laws that limit the market share of major agriculture companies. Bob Martin, the program director at the Center for a Livable Future, told NPR that the crux of the problem is the industry’s wealth and ability to sway legislators through lobbying efforts. “I think that the power of the industrial animal agriculture sector is almost overwhelming,” he told the news source.