First-Ever National Legislation Introduced to End Sow Gestation Crates

Their bill, introduced last week as the Pigs in Gestation Stalls (PIGS) Act, H.R 7004, focuses on one simple notion: motion. Animals used in food production should be allowed to move.

It is the first-ever federal bill to ban extreme confinement of pigs.

Allowing Farm Animals to Move Not a Novel Idea

Voters in Florida in 2002 and in Arizona in 2006 showed the way by favoring citizen initiatives to ban extreme confinement of sows. California voters said they want nothing to do with extreme confinement in a landslide vote in 2008, and then a decade later they approved Prop 12 to strengthen it. That latter measure was similar in form to a 2016 Massachusetts ballot measure to ban confinement and to restrict the sale in their state of pork, eggs, or veal from factory farms anywhere. Six other states ban the crates, too.

Just as consequential, 60 of the largest food retailers have pledged to stop buying pork from operations that confine breeding sows, with most having pledged to end sourcing from confinement by the close of 2022.

McDonald’s announced in 2012 that it “believes gestation stalls are not a sustainable production system for the future.” Kroger stated that “a gestation crate-free environment is more humane and that the pork industry should work toward gestation crate-free housing.” Costco said it wants “all of the hogs throughout our pork supply chain to be housed in groups.”

Force Feeding Their Customers

Foie gras (“fatty liver) is generally produced by sticking a pneumatic feeding device down the throat of ducks and geese and pumping in volumes of corn, swelling their livers to 10 times its normal size. The duck or goose is killed, and high-end consumers eat the diseased, gorged liver.

The pork industry isn’t force-feeding pigs.  But it is, in a way, trying to force-feed American consumers their factory-farmed pork. Take the 50 million consumers in the states of California and Massachusetts who said they want no pork sold in the state that comes from farms using gestation crates. The pork industry is calling on Congress and the courts to overturn their laws. Just eat your pork the way we serve it up, they tell their customers. Be quiet. We know best.

That’s called one thing: contempt for your customers.

Farm Animals Are Animals, Too

Most Americans would be shocked to learn that there are no federal laws to protect animals on farms. The pork industry takes billions in subsidies from the federal government, but squeals at pitch level when that same federal government asks them to observe minimum standards of animal care. They feed at the government trough but cannot bear the thought of abiding by even the most basic animal-welfare responsibilities.

Big agribusiness has had a vise-grip on policymaking at the federal level for decades, but a mass grassroots mobilization from conscious consumers can invert the politics of this issue overnight.

Please reach out to your Members of Congress and urge them to cosponsor the PIGS Act and enlist other like-minded people to upend the idea that it’s okay to immobilize animals on factory farms as customary practice and deny animals even the ability to turn around. You can TAKE ACTION NOW!

Related Content:

• Companies Failing to Fulfill Promises to End the Use of Cruel Gestation Crates
• 9 States That Have Banned Cruel Gestation Crates for Pigs
• Federal Court Rejects California’s Proposition 12 Appeal for a Second Time

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