The ongoing legislative battle over the future of farm animal welfare in the United States has reached a critical juncture. The Senate’s new Farm Bill framework, bolstered by provisions from Senator Cory Booker’s Farm System Reform Act and the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act, promises significant advancements in curbing factory farming and promoting more humane and sustainable agricultural practices. This framework includes measures to assist farmers in transitioning away from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and mandates greater transparency in the reporting of animal depopulation events, signaling a pivotal shift towards a more just and environmentally friendly food system.
However, this progress is threatened by the House’s version of the Farm Bill, which includes the controversial Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act. This act poses a serious risk to state and local authority over animal protection laws, potentially undermining years of advocacy and legislative gains. As the debate intensifies, stakeholders and advocates are called upon to engage and ensure that the final legislation prioritizes the welfare of farm animals and the integrity of humane laws.
The ongoing legislative battle over the future of farm animal welfare in the United States has reached a critical juncture. The Senate’s new Farm Bill framework, bolstered by provisions from Senator Cory Booker’s Farm System Reform Act and the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act, promises significant advancements in curbing factory farming and promoting more humane and sustainable agricultural practices. This framework includes measures to assist farmers in transitioning away from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and mandates greater transparency in the reporting of animal depopulation events, signaling a pivotal shift towards a more just and environmentally friendly food system.
However, this progress is threatened by the House’s version of the Farm Bill, which includes the controversial Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act. This act poses a serious risk to state and local authority over animal protection laws, potentially undermining years of advocacy and legislative gains. As the debate intensifies, stakeholders and advocates are called upon to engage and ensure that the final legislation prioritizes the welfare of farm animals and the integrity of humane laws.
Senate Farm Bill Framework Signals Important Steps for Farm Animals. But House Framework Still Presents EATS Act Threat.
Following two years of lobbying by Farm Sanctuary and other aligned organizations, the new Senate Farm Bill framework includes key provisions from Senator Cory Booker’s Farm System Reform Act and the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act. If this language remains in the Farm Bill, it will bring about critical progress in the fight against destructive factory farming.
The Senate’s Farm Bill framework includes a provision from the Farm System Reform Act that will help curb factory farming by providing farmers with opportunities and resources to transition away from operating Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). The framework expands the purpose of the Regional Conservation Partnership Program to include “facilitating the conversion from concentrated animal feeding operations to climate-friendly agricultural production systems (including regenerative grazing, agroforestry, organic, and diversified crop and livestock production systems).”
Adding opportunities for factory farm transitions to Farm Bill priorities is a critical step in the right direction to shift federal funding and resources away from industrial animal agriculture and create a more just and sustainable food system.
The framework also includes a provision from Senator Booker’s Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act that would make the factory farm industry more accountable for egregiously cruel culling methods, such as ventilation shutdown, in which animals suffer a slow death due to heatstroke.
The annual “depopulation” reporting requirement “Requires the Secretary of Agriculture to compile and make publicly available an annual report containing information on the Department’s completion of animal depopulation events including the number of events, geographic region, animal species, method and cost of depopulation, and reason for depopulation.” This is a crucial step toward greater transparency surrounding the treatment and slaughter of farm animals.
Animal agriculture has intensified while animals, workers, communities, and our environment have paid the price. Thanks to many years of advocacy by Farm Sanctuary and like-minded advocates, the new Senate Farm Bill framework recognizes that it is more important than ever to shift federal funding toward food production that serves us all.
Although the Senate Farm Bill framework represents crucial progress, we need your help to defeat a threat to humane laws in the House Farm Bill framework. The House draft contains language related to the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act, which undermines state and local authority to enforce animal protection laws on farms.
We are grateful for language in the current draft of the 2024 Senate Farm Bill framework that encourages a shift away from factory farming, and we appreciate Senator Booker’s leadership on this issue. On the other hand, we are deeply concerned that the House draft includes language from the EATS Act that undermines state humane laws, and we will be working to have it removed.
Gene Baur, President and Co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s premier sanctuary dedicated to farm animal rescue and advocacy
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Notice: This content was initially published on FarmSanctuary.org and may not necessarily reflect the views of the Humane Foundation.
