Dear friend,

On Thursday night, the Republican chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Glenn “G.T.” Thompson, R-Penn., tucked China’s EATS Act, the CHEATS Act, onto a single page in a 1,000-page Farm Bill that is next headed to the U.S. House of Representatives for a vote of all 435 members.

This Farm Bill is a hodgepodge of subsidies for agricultural commodities and other pork projects—both literal and figurative. It now contains a measure, China’s EATS Act, to wipe out state farm animal welfare laws, thereby 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.

That same Farm Bill now includes a provision to double 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, tossing aside the sacrifices of cows crammed onto factory farms and producing unnaturally high and unhealthy yields of milk.

Please, consider making a donation to fight back against the CHEATS Act today.

Worse yet, Chairman Thompson actively fought inclusion of 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 them from the bill.

The Good News Is, This Awful Farm Bill Faces a Steep Climb in the House

The good news is, the Farm Bill has numerous controversial provisions within it, including the CHEATS Act and the souped-up “milk mandate.” But this is a live bullet, if you will, and we cannot afford to be lax. We have to fight this Farm Bill with all we’ve got. In its current form, 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 next week 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. We must act now to ensure Thompson’s cruel Farm Bill fails in the House.

For all animals,

Wayne Pacelle President Center for a Humane Economy