This week, the public interest law firm Public Justice announced the rollout of a national food project that will unite attorneys and communities across the country to work on cases that involve agribusiness. The announcement comes as concerns about the power of corporate agriculture are growing, from the heartland to Capitol Hill.
Public Justice has been involved in some of the highest-profile agriculture cases in recent years, including fighting ag-gag laws, right-to-farm expansions, and corruption in the commodity checkoff program. The group’s new project will train attorneys at firms that haven’t previously worked on agricultural and environmental cases and create a network of lawyers to represent communities’ interests in lawsuits that involve agribusiness.
Jessica Culpepper, an attorney with Public Justice and lead on the new food project, says that although the country’s biggest law firms have often taken on the tobacco and energy industries, they haven’t always seen agriculture as a sector in need of legal intervention. “[The agriculture] industry has been really convincing and powerful in terms of holding the narrative” and “convincing everybody that this is what you have to do if you want to eat,” she says.
With an expanded staff and a renewed focus on agribusiness, Public Justice will “spend more resources getting huge plaintiff-side firms to take up more of these issues,” Culpepper says. “[Their] focus has been on big banks, gas companies — not enough energy has been focused on JBS and Cargill and Smithfield and Perdue.”
Attorneys from Public Justice have been involved in lawsuits that overturned Wyoming’s ag-gag law, challenged Brazilian meatpacker JBS over polluting a Colorado river, and temporarily halted the collection of the Montana beef checkoff tax. The group partners closely with community organizations in areas where agricultural production is concentrated, such as the Delmarva Peninsula and North Carolina.
“Often it is the most vulnerable communities impacted by industrial polluters,” says Maria Payan, a consultant with the Socially Responsible Agricultural Project, who has worked with Public Justice. “Without the legal resources that Public Justice brings to communities, these communities would not have a fighting chance against these powerhouses. They are the lifeline for communities, literally.”
Similar models exist elsewhere in the legal sector, such as the Chesapeake Legal Alliance, which connects community and environmental advocates in the Chesapeake Bay region to legal resources and staff and volunteer attorneys.
The announcement of Public Justice’s new project comes as criticism of agribusiness has been gaining traction. Concerns about the power of corporate agriculture, long a core issue for many independent farmers, has now reached even the platforms of Democratic presidential candidates. Earlier this week, farm advocates met with Capitol Hill staff to discuss a renewed effort by the Trump administration to pass protections for livestock producers who work under contract with meatpackers.