People want healthier food, and voters have passed laws requiring better standards for how that food is produced. American family farmers are meeting those standards.
But corporate pork interests, including foreign-owned Smithfield, are pressuring Congress to roll back those standards.
That is the fight over the so-called Save Our Bacon Act, which lawmakers should keep out of the final farm bill.
The bill would strip states of the right to set higher standards for food sold within their own borders. Its main target is California’s Proposition 12, a voter-approved law that requires pork, eggs, and veal sold in the state to meet stronger animal welfare standards.
For pork, Proposition 12 bans gestation crates by requiring breeding pigs to have enough space to stand up, lie down, turn around, and extend their limbs. Gestation crates keep pregnant pigs in stalls so small they cannot turn around.
Many independent farmers have already adapted to meet those standards and sell into California’s Prop 12 market. Farmers who invested to meet the market should not have the rules changed after they’ve already made those investments. Congress should not punish them while rewarding the largest pork companies that want to preserve the old confinement model.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) recently withdrew his support from the Senate version of this bill. Marshall is a physician and chairman of the Make America Healthy Again Caucus.
The Senate Agriculture Committee appears to have followed his lead by leaving the measure out of its farm bill draft. Lawmakers should keep it that way.
Pigs are rooting, foraging animals. They move, explore, nest, and wallow. A system that locks them in place denies those basic behaviors and creates stress by design.
Intensive confinement systems concentrate animals in ways that can increase disease pressure and contribute to reliance on antibiotics. According to FDA data, swine accounted for about 44% of U.S. sales and distribution of medically important antibiotics approved for use in food-producing animals in 2023.
Antibiotic resistance does not stay on the farm. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says antimicrobial resistance can spread between people, animals, and the environment, including water and soil.
The implications extend beyond pork. A Harvard Law School analysis found the Save Our Bacon Act could jeopardize more than 600 state laws and regulations, including measures related to food safety, disease prevention, and consumer protection. At a time when states may need to respond quickly to animal health threats such as New World screwworm, lawmakers should think carefully before granting Congress the power to wipe out state food and agriculture protections nationwide.
The pork lobby already challenged Prop 12 at the Supreme Court and lost. Now, corporate pork is asking Congress to do what the court did not do.
The Farm Bill should help farmers stay in business. It should support healthier food and fairer markets. It should not be used to strip states of the right to set basic standards for food sold within their borders.
CONGRESS HAS TAKEN A STEP TO FIX HOUSING AFFORDABILITY — IT CAN’T AFFORD TO GO BACKWARD
The Senate should keep the Save Our Bacon Act out of the Farm Bill and reject any amendment that tries to add it back in.
Keeping pregnant pigs locked in crates will not make America healthier. Protecting confinement-heavy production will not reduce disease pressure, antibiotic dependence, or public concern about how food is raised. Congress should support farmers who are building a healthier food system, not corporate pork companies trying to hold the old one in place.
Angela Huffman is cofounder and president of Farm Action. She has spent 15 years in food and agriculture policy reform and market development, and raises sheep on her family’s sixth-generation farm in Ohio.