Dr Bob Lawrence

Bob Lawrence: The long view on food system reform

"We’re forced to take the long view on food system reform. I think we all realize how much work is left."

By Christine Grillo

Earlier this year, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) paid tribute to physician, professor, and activist Dr Bob Lawrence, who co-founded the organization in 1986 and has taken part in many international investigations of human rights abuses.

The tribute fell during the 25th anniversary year of another organization, one that Lawrence founded—The Johns Hopkins

Center for a Livable Future. Its mission is to support and advance a globally healthy, equitable, and sustainable food system. It seemed like a good moment to ask him to reflect on the Center's 25-year legacy, what it has accomplished, and where it's heading.

A few themes emerged as he considered the food systems reform movement and the fight to change the factory farm model.

Primary among them was his resolve to keep at it. Even when progress seems slow, he says, the fight itself is important. The

Center has spent 25 years shining a light on the problems, paving the way to find the levers to address them. A history lesson

Before diving into the Center's accomplishments, he shared a history lesson about a 1966 multilateral UN treaty, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The treaty states that all humans have the right to food, water, health, housing, decent work, and more. Although President Jimmy Carter signed it in 1979, the US Senate has still not ratified it, and Lawrence finds this fact very telling.

In the US, especially among Republican lawmakers, there's a lot of controversy around the idea that food, water, and health are rights. Food, water, and health should be goals; they insist, not rights. This pushback provides context for the uphill battle that is food system reform. "We're forced to take the long view on food system reform," says Lawrence. "I think we all realize how much work is left."

The Center for a Livable Future (CLF) was born of a conversation between Lawrence, former dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Alfred Sommer, and Henry Spira, an animal rights crusader who dreamed of reforming factory farms. So far, Spira's moonshot has not been realized. Factory farm model

The factory farm proved to be a model too entrenched in the American corporate landscape to be affected significantly by data, science, or public health advocacy. Also known as CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), a term created by the US Department of Agriculture, these operations have remained impervious to regulation, with a few important exceptions. The Center characterized this model of production as "industrial food animal production" (IFAP) to underscore the industrialization at the heart of the problem. "We certainly haven't shut down factory farms. But we've raised awareness and forced them reluctantly to adopt modest reforms."

One such reform came on the heels of CLF research into what happens as a result of feeding arsenicals to chickens, a Dr Bob Lawrence of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has a deep seated passion on the need for food reform. He's spent years trying to change the US food system and has had some wins along the way but in this interview with Christine Grillo he makes one point very clear, there's still a long way to go. Lawrence presents an interesting perspective on the way industrial food production impacts public health and democracy and believes that enlightened consumers can pave the way to a brighter future.

practice commonly used for preventing illnesses that arise from overcrowding in their cages and for growth promotion. The research showed that an inorganic form of arsenic—a known human carcinogen—accumulates in chicken breast meat and increases the risk of cancer in humans. In 2013, on the heels of this research, citing consumer health concerns, the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suspended the marketing and sale of Roxarsone and two other arsenic-based drugs. Lawrence contends that getting arsenicals out of the veterinary therapeutic stream was a victorious moment. Antibiotic resistance

The Center also helped draw attention to the role of IFAP in antibiotic resistance, a threat that still hangs over us today. Writing about this problem in 2013, Lawrence noted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's report claiming that, annually in the United States, two million people become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and 23,000 people die of the infections. Producers routinely administer antibiotics to the entire lot of their animals for "disease prevention" and also works to promote growth. A better, safer practice would be to reserve the drugs and use them selectively to treat illness in the livestock because the more widely these drugs are used, the more likely it is that "superbugs" will evolve.

The FDA's 2013 response to research by CLF and partners into antibiotic resistance fell short of CLF's goals; the agency asked the industry to voluntarily curb the misuse of antibiotics. The White House's response in 2014 was disappointing, as well: President Obama issued an executive order recognizing the problem, but the order had no teeth.

To see CLF's strong efforts on antibiotic resistance result in "voluntary guidelines" was disheartening. But Lawrence insists that the Center can claim victory for helping to get the issues out in the open.

While he's not putting all his eggs in the "human behaviour change" basket, Lawrence has a deep faith that enlightened consumers will make enlightened choices. He believes that

awareness and education are critical elements of positive change. To his point, in the last five years, we've seen poultry producers such as Tyson and Perdue end the routine use of antibiotics in much of their poultry production operations. Tyson and Perdue created a "no-antibiotics-ever" (NAE) label, and "antibiotic-free" has become almost common in poultry aisles. Because chickens have such short life cycles, removing antibiotics from their diets proved feasible—but will this trend extend to cattle and swine, which have longer life cycles? We will have to see. "I think we have succeeded in putting these issues on the map in a way that they touch consumers, policymakers, and food producers," Lawrence says.

He also points to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production as a triumphant moment for CLF for exposing the livestock industry's impact on public health, the environment, farm communities, and animal health and well-being. That report created a holistic approach for the Center, and other entities, to examine industrial livestock production through the lenses of public health, environment, animal welfare, and rural America. "The Pew Report was a really big deal," says Lawrence, and it laid the groundwork for CLF's future work.

He also proudly points to CLF contributions to litigation concerning factory farms in Yakima Valley in Washington that resulted in meaningful outcomes for the residents filing suit. CLF has also supported residents of the Eastern Shore in Maryland as they seek to curb the expansion of poultry production operations in their rural towns. Efforts to pass legislation that would monitor for air pollution near poultry farms on the Eastern Shore have failed three years in a row, but passing new legislation takes many years and many tries. Understanding human motivation

He'd love to see better research into understanding human motivation. He believes there's still a lot of work to be done in the sociology and anthropology of food choice determinants. "We know we're bombarded by billions of dollars of marketing by food producers of unhealthy food and meat products, and so far, we have a feeble response on the part of good guys to counter that."

Despite his belief in the power of consumer choice to change industry, Lawrence knows that policy reform is critical to meaningful change. Where food system reform efforts have had lacklustre results, he lays much of the blame on our current political system; corporate interests dominate that. But is it fair to ask individuals to change the system through personal choices alone when what might actually be called for is policy change? "Our elected officials are overwhelmingly misrepresenting our democracy. It’s a deep flaw, and it’s haunting us in every policy domain. It’s the tyranny of the minority, and that’s what’s holding us back. Our long-term survival as a democracy depends on solving misrepresentation.”

But if he had a magic wand, how would he use it to create the food system that the Center aspires to advance and support? He has a quick answer and speaks about two domains.

The first magic wand would strengthen the Environmental Protection Agency so it could vigorously enforce the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. Using that legislation to control air, soil, and water pollution would enable significant in-roads into industrialized food animal production, which notoriously pollutes rural communities with animal waste. Those communities are almost always low-income communities and communities of colour; if the EPA could make progress on environmental justice, it would simultaneously affect some racial justice as well. Food system complexity

The second magic wand would address the complexity of food systems by incentivizing regenerative production and farm practices. Lawrence believes this could be achieved via reforms within the USDA, federal incentives for regenerative agriculture, and overall economic reform.

But is economic reform in the wheelhouse of a research centre such as CLF?

“It may sound like mission creep, but we’ve seen how dangerous consolidation is,” says Lawrence, referring in part to the fact that only four producers control 82 per cent of the meat supply in the United States.

“Big corporate interests that control the Senate are driving the political agenda and taking us in an unsustainable direction. We’ve got to take on issues like that. We’ve got to do systems thinking.”

Lawrence closes the reflection by recalling his upbringing.

“I was raised by a Calvinist theologian minister. It sickens me now when I hear politicians talking about God’s will as an explanation for everything, and it’s so offensive to the idea of autonomy and what makes us human.”

He’s had many conversations with his young-adult grandchildren about individual choices and how the myths of rugged individualism and American exceptionalism have gotten us to this uncomfortable moment in history. As a society, he says, we’ve failed utterly at incorporating communitarian ideals into our culture and politics. None of us is truly alone, he says. We all bear responsibility for others.

“That idea of being responsible to others is at the heart of addressing large problems through policy and regulation. Each of us has to say, ‘How is this going to impact people around me?’”