The industrial meat industry has been hogging the food-related news cycle lately. The COVID-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants. The slaughterhouse shut-downs. The “depopulating” of farm animals. Meat shortages and rising meat prices.

And then there’s the corresponding good news: Consumers buying more organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised meat products from local farmers and CSAs—even online sales of these products are surging.

So far, the industrial factory farm dairy industry hasn’t seen nearly as much news coverage during the pandemic. But under the mainstream media radar, two organizations recently shone a spotlight on dairy producers.

The Institute for Ag and Trade Policy (IATP) issued a report on the role of industrial dairy in global warming. The report, “Milking the Planet: How Big Dairy Is Heating Up the Planet and Hollowing Rural Communities,” calls for “redirecting public funds away from industrial agriculture, regulating the public health, environmental and social impacts of this extractive model of production and designing incentives to regenerate rural communities through agroecology.”

Got organic milk?

There are plenty of reasons to drink it.

And there are lots of organic dairies producing—with real integrity—authentic nutrient-dense organic milk, including raw milk.

Unfortunately for those organic dairies and for consumers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (NOP) lets some very large dairies get—and keep—organic certification, even though they don’t play by the rules.

SIGN THE PETITION: Tell the National Organic Program: No more cow flipping! Finalize the Origin of Livestock Rule and close the loopholes that let Big Organic dairies cheat family farmers and consumers.

Any mention of factory farm corporations usually conjures up names like Tyson, Cargill, Koch Foods, JBS, Perdue and, more recently, retailer-turned-factory-farm, Costco.

Some consumers will also think names like Monsanto (now owned by Bayer), Syngenta (now owned by ChemChina) and DowDupont—the companies behind the massive amounts of GMO grains grown to feed imprisoned animals.

Even fewer consumers, however, will think “Big Pharma” when they hear the words “factory farm.” 

Yet, the pharmaceutical industry plays an integral role in industrial factory farming. 

Giants like Bayer and Elanco want us to think they’re in the business of “animal health.” But what they’re really doing, is pushing drugs—on farm animals. And as the recent news of Elanco Animal Health’s proposed $7.6-billion acquisition of Bayer Animal Health reveals, a dizzying number of relatively recent spin-offs is leading to monopolization in the world of “Big Farma.”