Dear John,

The leaders at the National Pork Producers Council are trying to hoodwink members of Congress.

They are spinning a false and phony yarn about the effects of implementing California’s landmark ban on the sale of pork that comes from pigs trapped in cages barely larger than their bodies.

Our report on the pig industry and its practices and market penetration, released today at a national press conference, reveals that the NPPC is working with allies in Congress to overturn statewide elections—mainly Prop 12 in California and Question 3 in Massachusetts—to benefit massive, foreign-owned factory-farming conglomerates. Their bill is the EATS Act and it would gut any state law that puts any limits on agricultural commerce, especially Prop 12 and a similar measure passed by Massachusetts voters known as Question 3.

Two of the NPPC’s biggest members—the Chinese Communist-controlled Smithfield Foods and the Brazilian-owned JBS—control 40 percent of the U.S. pig industry. These players oppose having any standards on animal welfare in the United States, and that’s exactly what the so-called EATS Act would achieve.

We need your help to defeat the EATS Act and continue our fight for pigs. Will you make a contribution of $10 or more today to support this work?

Time and again, voters, federal judges, and corporate retailers have said it’s time to move on from these crates because they are inhumane and they immobilize the mother pigs. At our press conference, we pointed out that sows can live for three years in a space the size of a coffin or a refrigerator, unable to turn around or take a full step forward or backward. It’s the worst form of solitary confinement for animals who did nothing to deserve this form of routine torment.

We’ve been winning in our campaign to end the Cage Age in agriculture, and because of that, the pig industry has been diversifying over the last 20 years. The industry already has more than sufficient capacity to satisfy the new demand for more humane-raised pork for California and Massachusetts.

In this battle between animal welfare advocates and the NPPC, the factory farmers have been losing.

• NPPC got routed at the ballot box in Massachusetts when Amendment 3 came up for a vote. Nearly 80 percent of voters said they want to stop the sale of pork that comes from sows cruelly confined in gestation crates.
• California voters made a similar judgment in passing Prop 12 in a landslide.
• After voters approved the ballot measures, the NPPC and its allies went to court, claiming Prop 12 and Amendment 3 are unconstitutional. Twelve federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, turned back their challenges. Remarkable that 12 of 12 federal court rulings went our way!
• While all of that was going on, 60 major food retailers—including McDonald’s, Costco, and Kroger—adopted policies against gestation crates. Sixty corporate policies! Just about every major food retailer in the nation.

Yes, after facing defeat and bucking an emerging consensus that gestation crates are inhumane, the NPPC still has the temerity and the gumption to go to Congress to try to overturn U.S. laws and thwart the will of 22 million Americans who voted in favor of ballot measures to ban gestation crates.

Make no mistake, this is an assault on our national elections. And the biggest beneficiaries are foreign-owned factory farms who want to expand their footprint in American agriculture.

Let’s face it, the NPPC’s political maneuvering is completely at odds with the principles of states’ rights—also with notions of basic decency in the treatment of animals.

All animals deserve humane treatment, including animals raised for food. Perhaps especially animals raised for food, given that they are being sacrificed for human appetite.

The EATS Act is so broad that it could subvert not only Prop 12 and Amendment 3, but dozens of other state laws, including state laws limiting overuse of antibiotics and stopping the use of dangerous pesticides.

And for good measure, let’s remember that the NPPC is even dismissing the concerns of thousands of American pig farmers who think the EATS Act will hurt them. The California and Massachusetts laws provide critical markets for the pig farmers who have collectively invested hundreds of millions of dollars in more extensive housing systems and are excited about the ability to sell their products in these states. This truth proves that the NPPC favors the factory farmers over the family farmers.

We need your help to stop Big Pork from nullifying the most important farm animal protection laws in the nation.

We need your help to defeat the NPPC’s EATS Act in Congress.

John, please consider donating to our Cage-Free Future campaign. We will again face the might of agribusiness giants profiting off the gross exploitation of animals.

And second, if you live in the United States, please write to your two U.S. Senators and your U.S. Representative and urge them to reject the EATS Act and to defend states’ rights. We’ve made it easy for you. Take action now.

We need your help today! The animals need your help today!

For the animals,

Wayne Pacelle President Animal Wellness Action