Don’t Let Them Reverse Animal Welfare Standards

The agriculture industry has been relentless in trying to reverse progress in welfare standards for animals used for food, and it now has a grip on the proposed Farm Bill in the House of Representatives, a five-year roadmap for how agriculture products are produced, sold, and distributed across the country. The bill includes provisions that would overturn important state and local animal welfare laws, including California’s Proposition 12, which prohibits the use of cruel intensive confinement farming practices such as gestation crates for pigs, battery cages for egg-laying hens, and veal crates for calves.

Your help is needed to block this effort to strip welfare laws meant to protect animals exploited by the agriculture industry!

Enacted with 63% of voter support, Prop 12 does not allow in-state production and sale of animal products that involve extreme confinement of sows, hens, and calves. Fifteen other states have similar laws addressing intensive confinement for farmed animals, all of which  would also be weakened by the House’s proposed Farm Bill. The pork industry has repeatedly challenged Prop 12, even taking its case to the Supreme Court, which upheld the law. Nonetheless, pork lobbyists have their hands on the Farm Bill and aim to nullify Prop 12, considered to be the strongest farm animal welfare law in the U.S. This effort to weaken animal welfare comes at a time when surveys show that 80% of American voters support humane farming practices.

The proposed Farm Bill would allow pork and other agriculture industries to continue intensive farming practices that maximize profits at the expense of animal health and welfare. If this language remains in the final version of the Farm Bill it would have devastating effects on animals and their welfare.  AAVS usually asks you to take action for animals in labs, but anyone can see that this power grab is shameful and bad for animals.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Please contact your legislators and urge them to block any provisions in the Farm Bill that would nullify welfare laws meant to protect animals.