Animals
Big Pork pushes Congress to overturn Prop 12
By Brendan Hoover
Tell your Congressmember to oppose any attempt in the next Farm Bill to preempt state laws protecting farmed animals.
August 11, 2025
Defeated repeatedly by voters, state lawmakers, the courts, and private industry, the corporately dominated U.S. pork industry is throwing one last Hail Mary to protect its cruel and exploitative business model.
Federal lawmakers are due to consider an updated Farm Bill this fall, and pork industry leaders desperately want Congress to pass legislation overturning laws in California and Massachusetts that provide minimum animal welfare standards for breeding pigs, veal calves, and egg-laying hens.
Kirkpatrick Policy Group calls on Oklahoma animal advocates to tell their members of Congress to oppose any legislative attempt to overturn California’s Proposition 12 and Massachusetts’ Question 3.
A panel representing the nation’s largest pork producers testified before the U.S. House Agriculture Committee on July 23, urging Congress to pass federal legislation to preempt state laws such as Prop 12 and Question 3, which ban the in-state sale of whole pork, veal, and egg products made from farmed animals raised in confinement.
Congress has two bills to choose from. The Save Our Bacon Act (H.R. 4673), introduced in July by Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa, would prevent states from enforcing animal welfare standards for pork raised outside their borders but sold within them, and would reaffirm that producers can sell their products across state lines without being subject to other states’ production mandates.
The Food Security and Farm Protection Act (S. 1326), introduced in April by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, would preempt states and local government from imposing any pre-harvest productions standards (such as animal housing) on agricultural products produced in other states but sold within their own borders. The bill defines agricultural products using a 1946 federal law that encompasses a wide range of products including pork, milk, honey, flowers, herbs, and more.
The panelists blamed Prop 12 for rising production costs, retail prices, and logistical problems. “Without congressional intervention, the industry is left vulnerable to a regulatory patchwork that fractures the national pork market,” said Pat Hord, an Ohio pork producer, and the vice president of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC).
Lawmakers from pork-producing states criticized laws requiring breeding sows be given enough space to stand up, turn around, lie down, and extend their limbs—basic natural behaviors. Prop 12 says pregnant pigs must be given twenty-four square feet of usable floor space rather than the industry-standard fourteen square feet (roughly the size of a reclined airline seat) offered by gestation crates, individual metal cages that keep sows immobile for much of their miserable lives.
“I can’t think of an issue more important (to) consumers all over the country, maybe the world,” said Representative Frank Lucas, representing Oklahoma’s Third Congressional District, including Guymon, where Seaboard Foods operates a meatpacking plant that slaughters and processes about 22,000 pigs per day, nearly all born from mothers housed in extreme confinement.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, along with seven other governors from major pork-producing states, wrote to the chairs and ranking members of the U.S. House and Senate agriculture committees, asking them to overturn Prop 12. “We ask that Congress make clear that each state may regulate livestock production within its own borders, but not the production of livestock in other states,” states the letter, dated July 23.
The pork industry takes umbrage with Prop 12 because California accounts for 13 – 15 percent of U.S. pork consumption (totaling about 10 percent of U.S. production) but produces less than 1 percent.
However, what the pork industry and its champions forget to mention is that Prop 12 doesn’t compel any pig farmer outside California to invest in new housing systems. The law simply dictates that whole pork products sold in the Golden State must comply with certain animal welfare standards.
The United States Supreme Court upheld Prop 12 in 2023, ruling the law did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Dormant Commerce Clause. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, rejected the argument that Prop 12 discriminates against out-of-state pork producers. “While the Constitution does empower Congress to regulate commerce among the States, it does not guarantee that pork producers will operate free from the laws of the States in which they choose to sell their products,” Gorsuch wrote.
The Congressional hearing, titled “An Examination of the Implications of Proposition 12,” was stacked with self-serving pork industry insiders whose primary goal is to protect the profit margin of America’s largest producers, including Smithfield, owned by the Chinese multinational corporation WH Group. While Smithfield—which controls 25 percent of the U.S. pork market—does produce some Prop 12-compliant pork products, its leadership has advocated for a federal law to overturn the laws in California and Massachusetts.
Since buying Smithfield for $4.7 billion in 2013, WH Group has faced scrutiny in Congress about its possible ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The Save Our Bacon Act and the Food Security and Farm Protection Act are both variations of a bill introduced in 2023, the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act, also supported by the NPPC. Oklahoma Congressmembers Tom Cole and Stephanie Bice co-sponsored the EATS Act.
Hog wash: other Prop 12 myths busted
Anticipating a one-sided hearing in the House Agriculture Committee, the Washington D.C.-based advocacy nonprofit Animal Wellness Action preemptively issued a report, “Rebranded EATS Act Eliminates Nation’s Most Important Farm Animal Welfare Laws,” to dispel the false narrative that Prop 12 is an existential threat to the U.S. pork industry.
The Food Security and Farm Protection Act and the Save Our Bacon Act “would nullify state laws seeking to impose any kind of meaningful animal care standards in the United States, and this report will document that it is grounded on demonstrably false and exaggerated claims,” wrote authors Svetlana Geigin, Jim Keen, and Thomas Pool.
The legislation would invalidate hundreds of state laws that impose restrictions on the sale of plant and animal products, laws driven by concern about many other issues as well, including disease spread, public health, environmental contaminants, and more, the authors said.
Whole pork prices in California have increased by about 20 percent since Prop 12 took effect, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. However, research from the University of California at Santa Cruz estimates that retail prices in the state have only increased about 7 – 10 percent, much less than the 50 – 60 percent predicted by the NPCC. “Despite fearmongering efforts by the NPPC and its allies, there have been no pork product shortages in California,” the authors wrote.
Furthermore, the report states, prices for fresh pork were going up nationwide before Prop 12 was implemented due to a variety of factors, including: inflation, rising feed costs, labor market constraints, supply chain disruptions, disease-related production shocks, and tariffs. The legal challenges brought against Prop 12 and Question 3 also created market instability, said Galina Hale, professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz. “Some of this price increase was due to the uncertainty that was created by the NPPC,” Hale said, according to the report.
Simply stated, Prop 12 hasn’t caused higher food prices nationwide, said Dr. Bailey Norwood, an agricultural economist at Oklahoma State University. “From the economic analyses I’ve reviewed, there is no indication that Prop 12 has contributed to elevated pork prices at the national level. Moreover, I don’t see any logical reason why Prop 12 would influence pork prices outside of California,” Norwood was quoted in the report.
During the July 23 hearing, the pork industry mouthpieces said that Prop 12 hurts small and medium-sized pig farms who don’t have the resources to adapt. President Trump’s new secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rollins, said the law negatively affects family farms. However, overriding Prop 12 and similar state laws would undercut family farmers who have already invested in more humane housing systems while rewarding massive corporations like Smithfield and Tyson who want to “impose one-size-fits-all rules favoring industrialized systems over community-based agriculture,” said former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, according to the report.
Representative Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a member of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, submitted over 150 letters from farmers who support Prop 12 and criticized the committee for not including pro-Prop 12 farmers on the witness panel.
The one seemingly nonpartial witness, legal expert Tiffany Dow Lashmet of Texas A&M University, testified that the Prop 12 debate is a balance between states’ rights and the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. “There are agricultural interests on all sides of the Proposition 12 debate,” Lashmet said.
Click on the Oklahoma Congress members’ name below to let them know you oppose the Save Our Bacon Act (H.R. 4673) and the Food Security and Farm Protection Act (S. 1326):
Representative Stephanie Bice.
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Kirkpatrick Policy Group is a non-partisan, independent, 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization established in 2017 to identify, support, and advocate for positions on issues affecting all Oklahomans, including concern for the arts and arts education, animals, women’s reproductive health, and protecting the state’s initiative and referendum process. Improving the quality of life for Oklahomans is KPG’s primary vision, seeking to accomplish this through its values of collaboration, respect, education, and stewardship.