Those lobbyist organizations representing interests of the animal agriculture industry have long misrepresented the harmful elements of their products, harm to animal and human welfare, as well as the harms done in their production processes to the environment. The very nature of this subversion has undermined consumer awareness and fostered distrust in systems of law and governance. Such a lobby that has the financial means to delay and avert court proceedings for multiple years while at the same time the industry is allowed to stand as “experts” in the writing of legislation meant to regulate business practices and protect health and the environment, makes a travesty of the social contract on which effective government depends. As a result, legislation leans towards the interests of the industry and against the interests of those whom the legislation is supposed to protect. These subversive practices lead to blatant levels of corruption in the governing process. Funds long ago devised to support struggling farmers and their families instead go to huge conglomerates, their corporate executives and stockholders, leaving vulnerable farmers, who labor upon the land and tend the animals, dried out or drowned out, left in debt, often debt tied to those very corporate entities.

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry profits from the damage to the health of animals and the human population, genetically modifying animals, accelerating their growth, subjecting them to drugs that keep them alive, despite their unsanitary conditions, to feed humans the animal flesh and secretions that itself provokes the chronic diseases that their drugs are used to suppress. To create these medicines, millions of animals are sacrificed in the name of science, whereas the results are often useless when applied to humans.

In this web of fraudulent, immoral business practice, the industries of animal exploitation, animal feed, animal agriculture, and animal testing, that deny investigation and inspections, cover-up wrongdoings, put out misleading marketing and manipulate legislation and court judgments, undermine the health of consumers, the wellbeing of the animals, and destroy the natural environment, stressing its resources to the limit, act in concert, undermining the efforts of other more ethical businesses and global institutions that seek to partner to achieve the realization of the SDGs.