Farm Bill Filled with Pork and with Pig Cruelty

Fattened-up measure omits reforms to combat animal-fighting, horse slaughter

Dear friend,

The Republican chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Glenn “G.T.” Thompson, R-Penn., just released a partisan Farm Bill that treats animal welfare like a joke. The bill is a disaster for animals, so we must stop it from passing. To do that, we need your help.

This Farm Bill is a hodgepodge of subsidies for agricultural commodities and other pork projects—both literal and figurative. It contains a measure known as China’s EATS Act, which we call the CHEATS Act, to wipe out state farm animal welfare laws, overturning California’s Prop 12 (to stop extreme confinement of farm animals). It would do the same for other critical state laws to give farm animals a minimal level of humane care.

The Farm Bill also doubles down on the milk mandate in the National School Lunch Program, adding whole milk to skim- and low-fat milk in school lunches. But it doesn’t offer any plant-based milk options for kids, even though about half of the 30 million kids in the program are lactose intolerant. Nearly 50 percent of milk in school lunches is thrown away. By failing to include a non-dairy drink for kids in the school lunch program, Thompson ensures the waste will continue unbated. Further, the plight of dairy cows—who suffer lameness and mastitis to produce freakishly high yields of milk—is morally discounted.

Please, contact your lawmakers and urge them to OPPOSE the CHEATS Act today.

Worse yet, Chairman Thompson didn’t include any meaningful animal welfare reforms that have broad bipartisan support, such as the FIGHT Act to combat dogfighting and cockfighting, a ban on the slaughter of horses for consumption, or a ban on greyhound racing. Each of these bills has overwhelming support among Democrats and Republicans, but Chairman Thompson decided to exclude every one of those provisions from the bill.

This Farm Bill Very Likely Headed for the Trash Bin

The good news is, the Farm Bill is currently expected to languish after it passes the committee on a party-line vote tomorrow. At some point though, lawmakers will get serious about passing a Farm Bill the President can sign. That bill will need to reflect the will of the American people. For now, the bill is a giveaway to special interests, mainly the industrial and foreign-owned pork industry, and to factory-farm dairies.

We must make our voices heard so Chairman Thompson’s bill doesn’t progress beyond his Agriculture Committee. Please call your U.S. Representative today at 202-225-3121 and tell him or her that you oppose the House Farm Bill as it’s currently written, you want China’s EATS Act removed from the bill, and you want commonsense animal welfare provisions, such as the FIGHT Act, included.

CHEATS Act Would Gut State Farm Animal Welfare Laws

It’s inexcusable that broadly popular measures to combat dogfighting and cockfighting, horse slaughter, and greyhound racing are not included in this Farm Bill. Instead, it has been turned into a weapon to attack state laws for animals.

Chairman Thompson is aligned with a radical corner of the industrial and foreign-owned pork industry that wants to gut legal standards for animal welfare at the state and federal level. They want no limits on how animals can be used or abused. These factory farmers see nothing wrong with immobilizing breeding pigs for their entire lives in gestation crates and not allowing them to move an inch or ever see the light of day.

Besides the obvious harm it would do to farm animals, the CHEATS Act threatens to deliver a potentially fatal financial blow to countless U.S. farmers who have invested millions of dollars adapting their business practices and working on more humane housing systems so that they can sell pork in states with reasonable animal welfare standards.

Including the CHEATS Act in the Farm Bill is an early Christmas present from Chairman Thompson to our largest global competitor, the People’s Republic of China, which already controls an unbelievable 26% of the U.S. pork supply through Smithfield Foods, which was acquired by a Chinese government-owned conglomerate in 2013.

Dozens of Republicans and Democrats have already signaled their opposition to the CHEATS Act, and that’s why it’s remarkable that Thompson included this poison pill in his Farm bill.

Please call your U.S. Representative today in opposition to the Farm Bill with its CHEATS Act provision. And please support our work to transform the bill as it moves through the legislative process. If Thompson’s version of the Farm Bill is allowed to see the light of day, many farm animals never will.

For all animals,

Wayne Pacelle President Center for a Humane Economy