Farmed animal advocates score another legal victory over Big Pork

July 8, 2026

Animal protection advocates have scored another legal victory over industrial pork producers.

The United States Supreme Court on June 30 declined to review a case brought by a group of pork companies, including Triumph Foods, regarding the constitutionality of a Massachusetts law—the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act—also known as Question 3.

The court denied the writ of certiorari filed by the petitioners—including pork companies located in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin—asking the Supreme Court to review a lower court’s ruling affirming Question 3. In the court record, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicated they would have granted the petition for a writ of certiorari.

By denying the motion, the Supreme Court left in place an earlier ruling issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which dismissed the petitioners’ legal challenge and affirmed the constitutionality and enforceability of Question 3, a voter-approved law that prohibits the sale in Massachusetts of whole pork products made from pigs confined in or produced using gestation crates—individual metal cages that restrict the movement of pregnant sows and are widely considered cruel and inhumane.

In other words, the Supreme Court agreed with the Frist Circuit in saying that Massachusetts voters have the right to demand certain welfare standards for pregnant pigs.

Triumph Foods has close business ties to Seaboard Foods, which operates one of the nation’s largest pork processing plants in Guymon. Seaboard’s vertically integrated production model relies heavily on massive sow barns filled with thousands of pregnant sows living in gestation crates, unable to turn around or fully extend their limbs.

Stymied by the courts, the highly concentrated U.S. pork industry has lobbied Congress to pass federal legislation that would overturn laws like Question 3 and California’s Proposition 12. The language from the current version, the so-called Save Our Bacon Act, was included in 2026 Farm Bill passed in April by the U.S. House of Representatives—and voted for by all five Oklahoma representatives.

The U.S. Senate is currently considering its version of the Farm Bill, and animal lobbyists in Washington D.C. were successful in keeping the Save Our Bacon Act language out of original version of the bill. Pork friendly legislators are expected to file an amendment to include the language.

If the Senate passes a Farm Bill that differs from the House version, the differences would be reconciled in conference committee.

Recent challenges to farmed animal welfare laws have failed

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled against a legal challenge to California’s Proposition 12. In that case, National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, the Supreme Court said Prop 12 does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Dormant Commerce Clause, allowing the state to require that all pork sold within its borders—regardless of where it is produced—meet California’s animal‑welfare standards.

In 2025, the Frist Circuit heard arguments from lawyers representing the pork companies, who said that Question 3, passed by initiative petition in 2016, should be preempted by the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) and that state laws such as Question 3 and Prop 12 “remain unconstitutional under the Dormant Commerce Clause and a variety of other constitutional doctrines.”

The First Circuit disagreed, affirming a federal district court’s decision and upholding the law. The appellate court said that Question 3 does not discriminate against out-of-state farmers, does not put an unfair burden on interstate commerce, does not conflict with federal meat inspection or packing laws, and does not violate due process.

Oklahoma Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Gentner Drummond (along with 12 other state attorneys general) signed onto a legal brief in 2023 contending that Question 3 was unconstitutional. Drummond also issued a press release in 2023 calling on Congress to pass the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act, an earlier version of the Save Our Bacon Act. In the statement, Drummond called laws like Prop 12 and Question 3 “radical anti-agriculture regulations.”

Why it’s important

Prop 12 and Question 3 are important because they set minimum welfare standards for pork sold in huge consumer markets, compelling national producers to meet those standards if they want access to California and Massachusetts. The two states combine to account for about 15 percent of the retail U.S. pork market.

Oklahoma is a top-ten pork producing state, specializing in producing a large annual pig crop—about 8.33 million in 2025. Hence, Oklahoma is known as the “baby pig state.” A majority of Oklahoma’s approximately 420,000 breeding sows are owned by Seaboard Foods. According to an NPPC report, Oklahoma exported about 25 percent of its 1.57 billion pounds of pork produced in 2023, while the rest was sold domestically.

In a confinement housing system, pregnant pigs live their entire adolescent and adult lives in gestation and farrowing crates. The crates are so restrictive that the pigs cannot turn around, walk, curl up, or interact normally with other pigs. “Smart, social, and playful, sows will demonstrate resistance when first confined (screaming and bar chewing). Distress eventually gives way to despondency; a three-year-old pregnant sow rarely responds to a nudge or dousing of water,” wrote the Kirkpatrick Foundation in its 2024 report, The Way Forward: A Report on the Extreme Confinement of Pregnant Pigs in Oklahoma.

Question 3 and Prop 12 give pregnant sows some semblance of quality of life while living in the brutal industrial animal agriculture system.

In all, eleven U.S. states have now banned gestation crates, and at least ten countries have followed suit. Additionally, more than 60 national food retailers, including McDonald’s and Costo, have either stopped sourcing pork from farms that rely on gestation crates or have pledged to.

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