California voters banned gestation crates in 2018. Sixty-three percent. Massachusetts did it in 2016. Seventy-eight percent. The pork industry sued both times and lost all the way to the Supreme Court.
So they did what you do when democracy keeps saying no. They added a provision to the House farm bill to nullify both state laws and preempt any future state effort to do the same thing. One industry. One provision. Millions of votes erased.
The largest pork producer in America is Smithfield. Smithfield is owned by a Chinese company. Congress just passed a House farm bill that overrides the will of American voters in order to protect a Chinese corporation's right to confine pregnant pigs in cages too small to turn around for their entire lives.
This is not a close call on the merits. Eighty-four percent of Americans in polling called that practice unacceptable. Tomi Lahren called the Save Our Bacon provision unprintable things. Mike Cernovich called it demonic. When an industry loses the argument with 84 percent of the public, loses in court, loses at the ballot box twice, and still wins in Congress... that is not democracy. That is a purchasing decision.
The Senate still has a vote. The conference committee still has a choice. The question is whether Congress works for the American electorate or for the National Pork Producers Council and the Chinese company that owns Smithfield.
Article tilted: โThe way we treat pigs is a sinโ. โThe practice of "crating" is torture, plain and simple. Voters want to end it, but Congress might not let themโ : https://t.co/oNOvZ9valk
Three powerful pieces on the Save Our Bacon Act dropped this weekend: from @NickKristof, @kathleenparker, and @Noahpinion.
This is much needed. The mainstream media has been silent on what may be the greatest legislative threat to animal welfare in a generation.
There's been a grassroots revolt against the Act on X -- led by conservatives. But only one network has covered it: Fox, thanks to @TomiLahren.
This is exactly what the pork industry wants. It knows the Act is deeply unpopular. Its paid-for politicians can only pass it if they're never forced to defend it publicly.
They were hoping you wouldn't notice. They're now hoping you'll stay quiet. Prove them wrong.
โOne of the great but incomplete moral revolutions of our lifetime has been the expansion of our compassion to encompass farm animals in a limited way, even as corporate agriculture pushes in the other direction,โ our columnist Nicholas Kristof writes. https://t.co/JptuTpsr07