Draft Senate Farm Bill Omits Maneuver by Smithfield Foods to Wipe Out State Laws Restricting Extreme Confinement of Sows

It was good news yesterday when Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., released his draft Farm bill, which omits the wicked Save Our Bacon (SOB) Act. His decision to leave that provision out of his agriculture policy grab bag is a blow to China’s Smithfield Foods and the National Pork Producers Council, which have aspired for years to see that America has no federal or state animal welfare standards for pigs and laying hens on farms.

The SOB Act is a rifle-shot maneuver in a long-running, two-decade-long campaign by foreign-owned and domestic factory farms to nullify voter-approved farm-animal welfare laws in California and Massachusetts. Fortunately, they misfired again, and their political efforts, in this instance, have landed in the loss column again and again.

Big Pork has lost five of five ballot measures, including the landslide election on Question 3 in 2016 (78% to 22%) and Prop 12 in 2018 (63% to 37%). These factory farm interests and their proxies have come out on the losing side in an astonishing 23 of 23 federal court cases challenging state farm animal protection laws, including a direct challenge to Prop 12 in NPPC v. Ross before a conservative U.S. Supreme Court. And they previously failed to federally preempt state animal welfare standards in both the 2014 and 2018 Farm bills.

It’s not looking good for them in this Congress, despite the House Agriculture Committee Chairman muscling the SOB Act into the House Farm bill and denying a vote to a bipartisan group of lawmakers who had plenty of votes to strip the provision on the floor.

In the Senate, it appears that not a single Senate Democrat supports the SOB Act. And a growing number of Republicans have distanced themselves from it as well. Most notably, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who introduced the legislation just last Congress, formally withdrew his support two weeks ago. Chairman Boozman has said that because the policy of congressionally overriding state animal welfare laws is so broadly unpopular, he’s omitted it from the Senate Farm bill.

Erasing the votes of more than 10 million Americans who approved these laws after vigorous public debate is no small matter, and more and more lawmakers have gotten the memo.

When California voters approved Proposition 12 in 2018, the measure received 7.5 million votes. To put the scale of the landslide into perspective, that’s more votes than any U.S. senator has ever won in any prior election campaign in American history. Massachusetts voters passed Question 3 even more resoundingly, winning 78% of the vote and 348 out of 351 towns across the commonwealth.

Yesterday’s action is also an acknowledgment that thousands of farmers have already adapted to changing consumer preferences and market realities. Largely because of our highlighting to consumers the problems with extreme confinement systems, pig and egg producers have invested billions of dollars in housing systems that move away from gestation crates for breeding sows and battery cages for laying hens. The market is already so diverse that it can meet the demand of six Californias and six Massachusettses without the need for a single new crate-free farm to come online.

Increasing numbers of lawmakers are saying Congress should reward innovation — not punish it.

Farm Bill Still Needs Work on Animal Welfare

But while the omission of the SOB Act is headline news for us, we are not satisfied with this Senate draft. The bill also omits animal welfare policies that have amassed strong bipartisan support in the Senate and the House.

Among them is the FIGHT Act, legislation led by Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., to strengthen federal efforts against organized animal fighting. No animal welfare bill that I can remember has ever attracted more support, with nearly 1,200 endorsers, from the Alabama Sheriffs’ Association to the Wyoming Sheriffs’ Association to the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Major County Sheriffs of America association.

America’s law enforcement community understands that dogfighting and cockfighting constitute malicious cruelty and are bound up with gambling, drug trafficking, illegal firearms activity, and other forms of organized criminal conduct. Congress should provide law enforcement with the tools needed to combat these abuses. The bill is a test of whether members of Congress trust American law enforcement on animal cruelty and organized crime subjects.

The draft also omits the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act, led by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., to end the slaughter of American horses for human consumption, whether the animals are butchered in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico. Congress has halted domestic horse slaughter for two decades, and if it’s wrong to slaughter horses at home, it’s wrong to slaughter American horses north or south of our borders.

And while the House Farm bill contains language to phase out commercial greyhound racing, the Senate draft does not include a comparable provision. With only two struggling dog-racing tracks remaining in the nation and 58 tracks having closed over the last three decades, the time has come to finish the job and end this fading, highly subsidized, highly unprofessional form of animal exploitation.

The Task Ahead for the Farm Bill and Animal Welfare

The chairman’s draft establishes the starting point for committee consideration. Senators now have an opportunity during committee consideration of the bill to offer amendments. They should take the opportunity to improve the legislation by cracking down on blood sports like dogfighting and cockfighting, stopping our iconic American horses from being shipped off to Mexico to be slaughtered, and closing the door on inhumane and outdated forms of entertainment like greyhound racing.

And there is one other provision that found its way into the Senate draft that must be removed.

The draft Farm bill contains the same alarming provision as the House measure: the repeal of a 30-year-old law prohibiting taxpayer subsidies for foreign marketing of mink pelts and mink products. In practical terms, Congress would once again allow taxpayer dollars to help underwrite promotion of mink fur products in overseas markets, including China.

At a time when lawmakers should focus on fiscal discipline, public health preparedness, and strengthening resilient agricultural systems, this proposal is an oozing wart that demands excision.

The mink industry, like the greyhound racing industry, is dying. At its heart, it’s not just a grossly inhumane enterprise producing a luxury product for a sliver of people in foreign markets. It’s the most serious zoonotic disease threat there is in terms of agricultural-style production of animals. Mink, it turns out, are viral mixing bowls, not just capable of spreading SARS-CoV-2 to people, but also H5N1 and other contagious, dangerous viruses. Because of concerns about inhumane treatment and viral spillover, 23 of 27 European Union countries have halted mink production.

It makes no sense for U.S. taxpayers to prop up an industry that produces a good no one needs and few people want, that comes with an immense cost of cruelty, and that can spawn the next viral epidemic.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Boozman deserves much credit for refusing to let his Farm bill be used as a tool to throw out the votes of 10 million American citizens. His committee members now can build a stronger, more comprehensive Farm bill that addresses several forms of animal exploitation that the American people have long recognized as inhumane and that come with a wide range of collateral costs.

The Senate Farm bill leaves out the SOB Act, but there is still work to do. Tell your senators to support stronger protections for animals!