Your Farmer's Voice on Capital Hill

This past week I traveled to Washington DC with a group of fellow farmers and small meat companies to lobby our state's congressmen and state senators about the detrimental effects the EATS Act will have on animal welfare, family farms, and our customer's food supply long term. 

I was really honored to attend with a huge thank you to American’s for Family Farmers that help fund my trip and our farm team keeping up with all the farm duties in my absence.

I also had the opportunity to be with other like minded small farmers and some up and coming meat companies like Butcher Box, Niman Ranch, and True Story Foods that I think are looking to reshape the food production standards in the US. 

The trip was my first time to D.C. and there were a few observations this country boy made that might make you laugh. 

#1. Pictures and movies don’t do the Capital building justice. It is beautiful, magnificent, and HUGEEE!!!

#2. SO MANY all black and tinted window SUV’s! Lol

#3. While, I thought I dressed up well in my nicest jeans and a button down collared shirt tucked in…I definitely felt a little underdressed at times as everyone wore slacks, suit jackets and a tie. I’ve never been somewhere where everyone dressed this way on a regular daily basis.

#4. The U.S. policy's are pretty much run by 20-30 year old staffers. 

For whatever reason, I was expecting to see a majority of older people here in D.C. However this really wasn’t the case.  

The staffers actually have so much power as they are responsible for communicating with their boss (i.e. congressman or senator) our meetings and key issues that the people are presenting to them. Everything goes through a staffer before the congressman or senator hears about it. 

Now I give these young staffers a lot of credit in our meetings with them they were smart, well articulate in their conversation, and informed individuals. Definitely not individuals to take lightly in their ability to influence. 

Why Go to D.C. to oppose the EATS Act?

The “Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act" (S.2019; H.R.4417) as it stands is a bit of a misleading title. Which on the face of it sounds good. However this is really Big Ag’s attempt to take more power over the agricultural industry as it would take away individual state rights and harm the niche markets that are developing to comply with animal welfare laws previous instated. 

They’ve been attempting something like this for years and after California’s proposition 12 and Massachusetts Question 3 were put into law recently January 1st. They feel all the more need to get this passed in the upcoming farm bill. 

Prop 12 and Question 3 are state laws that require mother pigs, veal, and egg laying hens have enough space to turn around and that some of these products sold in that state meet those requirements as well. 

Voters in these states agreed by an overwhelming majority to put these laws into effect knowing it would increase their cost on these food products, but they felt giving these animals a better living condition was essential. 

I learned that mother pigs in a commercial factory farm are actually put into a gestation crate to live for 4 months where they can’t turn around or walk. Here they are bred and kept while in pregnancy (gestation).

Then just before farrowing (having the baby) they are moved to the farrowing crate where it's a very similar living condition, but slightly wider so the babies access the mothers milk. 

Prop 12 law only required the gestation crates be removed and didn’t affect the farrowing crates. So in my opinion, it's an improvement, but still I think we have more progress to make in the way factory farms operate! 

While there, several hog farmers that provide pork to meat companies like Butcher box, Niman Ranch, and True Story Foods presented their story transitioning their hog farms to be compliant with Prop 12 and Q3. Investing millions of dollars to improve their facilities for the hog’s welfare by removing the gestation crates. Many since they switched not only found they could get a premium for their pork now that this law opened up a niche market, but it now was going to result in them being profitable vs risking to lose their farm. 

One farmer also shared the unintentional significant improvement in hog performance by removing these gestation crates! 

What a surprise…right? 

Duh folks....Pigs get stressed in this type of environment! 

I kept telling folks, “We are here in DC to honor the pig.” 

When young teenagers see pictures of these factory farms, it's no wonder, they stopped eating meat! 

This bible verse kept coming to my mind when I saw these pictures of pigs in the gestation crates. 

“The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel” Proverbs 12:10

At the end of the day, we have a responsibility as a farmer to honor these animals and provide a good living condition for them.

Educating Congress

All this said, we really tried to combat some of the lies that Big Ag are stating about this prop 12. 

Unfortunately they are stating so many misleading myths as facts. Some are just direct lies. 

One example of a misleading lie that set me off was they stated "Prop 12 will financially wreck family farms."

This couldn't be further from the truth. Since Prop 12 the pork industries quarterly earnings report are positive. If anything their fight to insert the EATS Act in the farm bill has created more uncertainty for the niche family farmers as I described above as they could potentially lose their new markets!

The reality is these “family farms” as Big Ag describes are under the thumb of big meat as they contract all their pork to 3 big meat companies. 

I invite you to watch this video that a fellow pork producer, Ron Mardesen, I had the honor to be with this week. He has an amazing farm with really high level animal welfare that I align so closely with. 

I think this video lays out how the hog industry has changed over the last 35 years and how it’s really not in the best interest of the family farms and rural communities, but rather the opposite.

Rescinding State Rights

The EATS Act will not only reverse the progress and investments farmers are taking towards animal welfare, but it's also going to threaten the future balance of power in the US government. 

This would erode the state’s rights to pass laws and regulations related to food safety, disease and pest control and other public health/welfare matters. 

In fact in 2023 the Supreme Court upheld California’s Prop 12 in court as constitutional. The EATS Act is really an attempt to take away state rights as taking it to court didn’t work for them. 

For me personally, this is probably the biggest reason I want to fight this. Prop 12 or not, EATS Act or not, in some ways, it doesn’t affect us as a farm all that much because we sell direct to consumers and folks buy from us because they do care about animal welfare and don’t trust what the grocery store has to offer. They know we are raising our livestock with care and to the highest standards!

However, if the states lose their power and the Federal government has complete control of this, I think it could be a slippery slope of potentially more bad policy that individual states will have no say on the matter. 

If you have time to watch this video, here's another video explaining the EATS Act and it's history in detail. 

Take Action! 

If you can, I encourage you to send an email or phone call to your local congressman in your district and let them know you oppose the EATS Act. 

Here's the direct link to search for your congressman in your district. Currently this is bill is still in the house. So let's try to stop it now before it heads to the senate. 

We need to make this known that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not want this Act or something similar in the upcoming farm bill. 

Thanks so much for reading and together we can shape a better food system for America!

God bless, 

Joe