How the meat trade — and members of Congress — try to overturn animal welfare legal guidelines within the Farm Invoice

Final yr, practically 130 million pigs had been raised for meat within the US, however they didn’t come out of nowhere; that they had mother and father. Or as pork producers name them, “breeder pigs.”

Because the Nineteen Seventies, producers have been protecting many of the breeding females — generally known as sows — in tiny enclosures referred to as gestation crates. It’s a manner for producers to extra intently monitor the pigs’ pregnancies and management their feeding, however in doing so, they’ve created one of many worst types of widespread animal abuse.

The crates are so small that the pigs — who’re extremely social and clever — can’t stroll and even flip round, and it causes many to chew the bars of their crate and interact in different repetitive behaviors which can be indicators of continual stress. They’re confined within the crates for just about their total life, till they themselves are shipped off for slaughter when their reproductivity wanes at round 5 years outdated.

The animal welfare scientist Temple Grandin has likened gestation crates to forcing a human to dwell in an airline seat.

If the usage of these crates disturbs you, you’re not alone. In 2002, Floridians — through a poll measure — voted to require pregnant pigs to have a minimum of sufficient room to show round and prolong their limbs, successfully banning the usage of gestation crates within the state. 4 years later, Arizona voters did the identical. Later, seven different states adopted go well with.

As essential as these legal guidelines are, they weren’t that efficient in truly getting many pregnant pigs out of gestation crates as a result of most of these states host little of the nation’s pork manufacturing. However all the pieces modified in 2016, when Massachusetts put a measure on the poll to not solely prohibit the usage of gestation crates within the state, however to additionally prohibit the sale of pork from farms that use such confining crates, whether or not the farm is in Massachusetts or not. (Disclosure: I labored on this marketing campaign throughout my time on the nonprofit Humane World for Animals.)

It handed overwhelmingly, with 78 p.c of voters in assist. And two years later, 63 p.c of California voters supported a virtually similar legislation. Rapidly, pork producers across the nation needed to cease utilizing gestation crates in the event that they wished to promote meat into these two states that, mixed, contained virtually 15 p.c of the US inhabitants.

However now, these overwhelmingly common legal guidelines have an opportunity of being upended — and gestation crates getting used to restrict extra pigs sooner or later — if a provision within the new Farm Invoice, now being hashed out in Congress, turns into legislation.

The combat over caging pigs is falling throughout sudden strains

Not everybody has embraced releasing the sows from their intense confinements.

A number of meat commerce teams, together with Triumph Meals — considered one of America’s largest pork firms — have sued California and Massachusetts quite a few instances to attempt to overturn their gestation crate legal guidelines. The trade’s authorized argument facilities across the declare that the animal welfare legal guidelines violate a authorized doctrine referred to as the dormant commerce clause, which places some limits on states enacting legal guidelines that have an effect on different states.

However the entire lawsuits have failed, together with one from the Nationwide Pork Producers Council that made it to the US Supreme Courtroom, which in 2023 dominated to uphold California’s legislation as constitutional.

Corporations and trade teams have additionally labored with members of Congress for over a decade to introduce federal laws to nullify legal guidelines like these in California and Massachusetts. The newest iteration is known as the Save Our Bacon Act, initially proposed final yr.

This effort, which for years went nowhere as standalone laws in Congress, now has a good likelihood at changing into legislation as a part of the brand new Farm Invoice, a package deal of laws that’s alleged to be reauthorized each 5 years and is the primary automobile for federal agriculture and diet coverage.

In late April, the Home of Representatives handed its model of the Farm Invoice, which included the language from the Save Our Bacon Act.

It’s “actually a Save Our Crate Act,” Brent Hershey, a hog farmer who opposes it, advised me. “A vote for the farm invoice,” he stated, “is a vote to cage an animal that may’t stroll or flip round.”

Hershey had used gestation crates for a lot of his decades-long profession elevating pigs in Pennsylvania, however a number of years in the past, he had a change of coronary heart because of his daughter, who was upset in regards to the crates.

“Someday, my daughter simply checked out me and he or she stated, ‘Dad, we’re not going to simply accept that,’” Hershey advised me final yr. “‘We’re going to demand that you simply do it a greater manner.’” Hershey transformed his hog-rearing observe to group housing, through which a number of pregnant sows are stored collectively in a bigger pen — a standard manner producers convert their amenities to accommodate these legal guidelines.

Many different hog farmers, like Hershey, don’t need Congress to overturn California and Massachusetts’ legal guidelines on ethical grounds, but additionally on financial grounds: They’ve transformed their barns to conform to allow them to promote their pork in these states. Overturning them implies that the money and time they spent on doing so would have been for naught.

Based on an April 2025 USDA estimate, 27 p.c of US hog producers had made or had been within the course of of constructing investments to adjust to the legal guidelines, a determine that has possible grown during the last yr.

Clemens Meals, one of many largest pork firms within the nation, has vocally opposed the Save Our Bacon laws.“Many within the trade, together with Clemens, have invested vital capital (and human capital) to fulfill the laws set by the folks of California and Massachusetts,” a Clemens spokesperson advised Vox in an electronic mail final yr. “Accordingly, Clemens stays vehemently against any legislative or regulatory motion that might overrule” the legal guidelines.

However not the entire trade feels the identical manner. Smithfield Meals, the nation’s largest pork producer, has publicly supported federal laws to nullify California and Massachusetts’ legal guidelines. Seaboard Meals, one other main pork producer, declined to remark for this story and referred me to the Nationwide Pork Producers Council, which declined an interview request and declined to reply detailed questions over electronic mail.

In a press release, an NPPC spokesperson stated that if left to face, California’s legislation “will immediate a patchwork of comparable state legal guidelines that can solely proceed to drive up the price of farming.”

The group pointed me to a lately revealed white paper, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed, from economists at North Dakota State College and the US Division of Agriculture. The researchers discovered that from January 2024 (when the California legislation went into impact) to January 2026, the worth of pork in California elevated by 73 cents per pound (a 15 p.c enhance) and 63 cents in Massachusetts (its legislation had gone into impact in August 2023). Nonetheless, the researchers observe, greater than half of the worth enhance might be attributed to “retail amplification,” or supermarkets including a premium for this type of meat — past any enhance in precise manufacturing value.

Simply how a lot it prices hog producers to adjust to California and Massachusetts’ legal guidelines, whether or not by retrofitting their barns or constructing new ones, has been in dispute. The Nationwide Pork Producers Council has argued it prices producers a minimum of $3,400 per sow. Hershey has stated it value him round $600 per sow. Whereas there was the upfront value to changing to a crate-free system, he advised me it’s paying off; the proportion of sows who die prematurely has declined, and they’re additionally producing extra piglets.

Simply because the pork trade is split over gestation crates, so too is Congress. For years, congressional division over gestation crates largely fell throughout partisan divides, with Republicans largely backing the pork trade’s effort, and Democrats largely opposing it. However this yr has been completely different. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, launched an modification with bipartisan assist to strip the Save Our Bacon Act out of the Farm Invoice. The Home Guidelines committee allowed votes on dozens of amendments to the Farm Invoice, however not Luna’s.

“We shouldn’t be doing something on the federal degree that might take away the autonomy of a state to resolve what’s finest for his or her farmers and what their residents select to placed on the poll after which cross by legislation in that state,” Luna stated on Fox Information earlier this month.

Now, the Senate is drafting its personal model of the Farm Invoice, and if it passes, the 2 chambers might want to reconcile any variations between the 2.

I reached out to each Senate Democrat’s workplace to ask whether or not this try to overturn the desire of California and Massachusetts voters could be a red-line situation for them within the Farm Invoice, and some — Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Alex Padilla (D-CA) — replied with robust opposition to the Save Our Bacon Act. Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) have additionally been outspoken on the difficulty.

“It is unnecessary for Republicans in Congress to bigfoot particular person states’ efforts to set greater meals security and animal welfare requirements — particularly these applied via a mandate from giant majorities of these states’ voters,” Van Hollen wrote in a press release to Vox, including that it doesn’t belong within the Farm Invoice.

“It is a extremely controversial and toxic coverage that ignores the desire of the folks,” Markey and Warren wrote to Vox in a press release. “These state legal guidelines had been overwhelmingly supported by a well-liked vote — they shouldn’t be overridden due to big-dollar lobbying.”

Maybe most significantly although was who didn’t reply, together with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). Klobuchar is the rating chair of the Senate Agriculture committee, making her the lead Democrat on the Senate Farm Invoice. In earlier Congresses, former Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) held that place and managed to forestall previous iterations of the Save Our Bacon Act from advancing within the Senate. However Klobuchar is at the moment operating for governor of Minnesota, the second largest pork producing state after Iowa, and the agribusiness sector has been a prime donor to her 2026 marketing campaign committee.

The meat trade’s anti-democratic bent

The makes an attempt to overturn California and Massachusetts’ legal guidelines by congressional motion is maybe the inevitable end result of an trade that’s intent on sustaining practices it could actually’t defend within the courts — or within the courtroom of public opinion.

We’ve been right here earlier than. Within the early 2000s, animal safety teams more and more went undercover to movie inside farms and slaughterhouses and documented horrible practices — like pig gestation crates and workers horrifically abusing animals. The movies typically made nationwide information, stunning hundreds of thousands of Individuals. However as a substitute of meaningfully enhancing animal welfare, trade teams as a substitute efficiently lobbied state lawmakers in round two dozen states to introduce laws to make it unlawful to videotape inside farms. A number of handed, although some have been struck down within the courts as unconstitutional.

The meat trade has additionally managed to contort laws with the intention to obtain different particular therapy beneath the legislation. Animal farms, for instance, are exempt from a number of air pollution and labor legal guidelines and exempt from most state animal cruelty legal guidelines.

There are additionally much less blatant types of subversion, through which the trade has withheld data and misled customers and policymakers:

A lot of the trade’s success at hiding cruelty and thwarting regulation stems from its penchant for storytelling — portraying itself not as a big, highly effective, extremely concentrated group of some dozen firms however slightly a free community of hundreds of thousands of salt-of-the-earth farmers simply making an attempt to scrape by.

“The trade has all the time tried to make use of its ‘homestead narrative’ as a manner of pushing fairly excessive measures,” Will Potter, creator of a latest ebook on deception within the agricultural trade — Little Purple Barns: Hiding the Reality, from Farm to Fable — advised me. “Popping out of journalism, I simply all the time had this religion…that if persons are uncovered to the reality and to information, the reality will win out.”

Not less than within the case of gestation crates and different intensive farming practices, this has held true. When voters are offered with the information on how they have an effect on animals, they vote to ban them. However because the Farm Invoice has revealed, these votes will not be protected.

Within the coming months, if the Senate manages to place collectively its personal Farm Invoice, we’ll discover out the place its members land: on the aspect of 1 trade group, or the desire of hundreds of thousands of voters who’ve made it clear that locking pregnant animals in tiny crates has no place within the nation.