Corporate agribusinesses depend on favorable science–often in the form of published research in academic journals–to gain legitimacy, regulatory approval, and market acceptance of products such as new animal drugs.
But a new report from Food & Water Watch charges the industry with playing an enormous and hard-to-track role in the production of such studies.
“Deep-pocketed corporations financially support academic journals where they publish their research, or they support the academic societies that oversee these journals,” reads Corporate Control in Animal Science Research (pdf), released Wednesday. “Industry representatives also claim positions on editorial boards of some prominent journals, potentially giving them influence over what kinds of studies are and are not published.”
Furthermore, the report states, “Corporate agribusinesses also author, fund and likely ghostwrite an enormous number of peer-reviewed studies, overwhelming the literature in some places with favorable research about their products and practices.”
Food & Water Watch charges some academic journals with “weak oversight” that enables agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies to exercise undisclosed, difficult-to-monitor influence over scientific articles, on which the public depends for allegedly independent review.