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Farmed animals are facing a new threat in Congress—and we need your help fighting back.
The What
The meat industry is driving a dangerous piece of legislation known as the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act. Its goal is to wipe out state laws that ban the sale of eggs or meat from animals kept in intensive confinement. This means the legislation could destroy years of hard-fought progress, leaving animals to languish in cruel cages and crates. AJ Albrecht, Mercy For Animals’ managing director for the United States and Canada, stated:
The EATS Act, if passed, would increase suffering for the vast majority of land animals raised for food in the United States and reverse decades of progress for hens, pigs, and calves. It would invalidate crucial anti-confinement laws in numerous states throughout the country and could prevent other states from adopting similar policies in the future.
It gets worse. The legislation prohibits states from passing the most basic protections for farmed animals and would reverse laws that protect animals in puppy mills, the wildlife trade, and cosmetic testing.
The Why
The meat industry is touting the EATS Act as its direct response to the Supreme Court of the United States’ recent decision to uphold Prop 12. Prop 12 outlawed some of the most extreme forms of animal confinement throughout California. When it was passed, the measure was the strongest farmed animal protection law in the world.
Intensive confinement is one of the cruelest practices in the meat and egg industries. For mother pigs, it means being kept in cages during pregnancy that are barely larger than their bodies. For calves raised for veal, it means spending their short lives in tiny hutches. For laying hens, it means being crammed so tightly into wire cages that they can’t even spread their wings. The passing of Prop 12 was a huge victory for animals and showed tremendous promise in alleviating some of this suffering.
Since Prop 12 passed in 2018, the meat industry has been fighting this monumental law. Placing profit over animal well-being, the National Pork Producers Council and American Farm Bureau Federation fought the state of California all the way to the Supreme Court. On May 11, 2023, the court sided with California voters and upheld Prop 12—a huge blow to the meat industry.
The How
We can still stop this legislation, but we need to act fast. Please take a moment to contact your members of Congress now and urge them to oppose the EATS Act.