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Dear John,
It violates every basic notion of animal care to keep an animal indefinitely in a cage that inhibits that animal from even turning around.
But that’s exactly what has become a customary practice in the industrialized pork sector. Factory farmers keep sows, who may weigh 300 or 400 pounds, in crates barely larger than their bodies. These crates immobilize and isolate these intelligent, sociable animals for three years straight.
The exhilarating news is, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled as constitutional two statewide ballot initiatives that banned gestation crates and the sale of pork that comes from the offspring of sows forced to live in narrow, barren metal cages. This clears the way for landmark laws in California and Massachusetts to establish more humane sales standards in these two states.
But Big Pork is furious that a majority of conservative and liberal justices ruled that the states have rights to establish animal welfare and food safety standards. They are now pleading their case to Congress to subvert democratic decision-making by the states. There, the National Pork Producers Council and its Big Meat allies—which lost five successive ballot initiatives and 11 straight federal court rulings—are trying to pass legislation to nullify state laws to protect farm animals.
We can’t let them do it.
Instead, what they should do is pass the Pigs in Gestation Stalls (PIGS) Act. That bill, H.R. 2939, by Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, would level the playing field nationally and ensure that all breeding sows have the opportunity to lie down, stand up, turn around, and freely extend their limbs.
Allowing animals to move around is as basic as it gets when we think of animal welfare. It is remarkable that it ever was acceptable to immobilize animals as a routine animal husbandry practice.
Please urge your federal lawmakers to cosponsor the PIGS Act and to oppose any bill that would undermine state laws to ban gestation crates. We must move past the era of cage and crate confinement in American agriculture.
Use our form to easily send a message to your legislators today.
Please support us so we can keep up the fight for all animals.
More broadly, we won’t relent in our Cage-Free Future campaign. We also will continue to press McDonald’s, Walmart, and many other major food retailers to honor their pledges to change their purchasing practices and to stop buying pork from operations that confine sows in gestation crates. We focus on getting corporations to account for animal welfare in all aspects of their operations, including their supply chains.
Thank you for caring so much.
Sincerely,
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Wayne Pacelle
President
Center for a Humane Economy
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