How the Government Fails to Protect Animals, Workers, the Environment, and the Public

Factory farms are abusing animals, mistreating workers, poisoning the public, and polluting the environment. How can they get away with it? Doesn’t the federal government keep these companies in check? Sadly, the government agencies that we count on to keep massive factory-farming businesses in line are being bought and sold by the very corporations that they’re supposed to be monitoring—and with tragic consequences.

Between the years 2000 and 2005, agribusinesses funneled more than $140 million to politicians, who more than earned their money by ensuring that laws that might protect consumers, animals, or the environment would not pass.¹ Perhaps even more insidious than the campaign contributions to legislators is the fact that the people we count on to regulate the factory-farming industry have often worked for this very same industry prior to working for the government or plan to work for it upon retiring from the public sector. They have every reason to be hopeful about their prospects—government officials who serve the needs of the farmed-animal industry are often offered plum jobs in the industry, and industry leaders are frequently rewarded with high-powered positions in federal agencies.

The Center for Public Integrity explains: “The meat industry created one of Washington’s most effective influence machines, partly by recruiting federal lawmakers and congressional aides for its lobbying juggernaut. . . . From filling lawmakers’ campaign coffers to plying them with all-expenses-paid trips and dangling the possibility of lucrative post-employment opportunities, the meat interests have overwhelmed the supposedly objective decision-making process in Washington.”²

The consequences for workers, the environment, public health, and animals can’t be overstated. Changes in the food-safety system have turned inspectors into paper-pushers who spend much of their time signing forms instead of inspecting animals and their carcasses, so filthy meat ends up on our dining tables. Inspectors are no longer required to monitor the “killing floor” for cruelty, so according to workers and inspectors, animals are routinely scalded or hacked apart while they are still alive. Workers in these industries are treated as disposable units of production, and they suffer from injuries at rates up to 35 times higher than their counterparts in other factory jobs.³ And environmental laws are as bad as they have ever been and are getting worse.

John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy warns that the most serious consequences of the government’s failure to regulate the meat industry are yet to come: “The recent ‘bad news’ about meat is just the tip of the iceberg. Governments and industry will do their best to protect the maximum sales and consumption of meat and to cover up, ignore, and deny the risks.”⁴

Read more about how the government fails to protect consumers and animals.