There was a time when conservatives stood squarely for local control, fair competition, and responsible stewardship. Yet today, many Republican lawmakers are abandoning these principles to pursue a federal mandate that overrides voters, favors industrial farm conglomerates over welfare-conscious family farms, and effectively codifies cruelty – all under the guise of supporting American agriculture.
At the center of this push is the Save Our Bacon (SOB) Act, championed by Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson.
Supporters say the SOB Act protects livestock producers from out-of-state red tape. While this might sound conservative on its surface, it is government overreach in disguise.
The SOB Act would strip state and local governments of their authority to regulate agricultural sales within their borders, nullifying welfare standards like California’s Proposition 12. Prop 12 simply requires that pork sold in California comes from breeding pigs given enough space to lie down, stand up, and turn around.
Contrary to claims that Prop 12 imposes a nationwide mandate, it does not dictate how out-of-state farmers operate. Producers who want access to California’s market choose to adapt; those who prefer not to can sell into other domestic or foreign markets. The SOB Act, by contrast, would enforce a lowest-common-denominator standard nationwide, barring states from setting higher welfare standards now or in the future.
A genuine free-market framework empowers consumers to decide what products they buy, and what prices they are willing to pay for their preferences. Likewise, it protects the rights of farmers to innovate, differentiate their products, and capture new market share. But by penalizing producers who respond to consumer demand, the SOB Act would ensure factory farms become the only viable business model.
Iowa already contains nearly 11,000 factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations, where animals are densely housed in extreme confinement. Though factory farms are big business in Iowa, ownership is concentrated among a small number of corporate giants. They squeeze out smaller competitors and export profits overseas, with a net negative financial benefit to local communities. Increasingly, small farmers are resorting to contracting with these corporations just to stay afloat.
Other family farmers across the Midwest have invested millions to adopt more humane practices. The SOB Act would punish these producers for following market signals while rewarding corporate mega-operations that rely on intense confinement.
Because many foreign conglomerates own factory farms on American soil, the SOB Act even bolsters foreign adversaries. When Chinese-backed WH Group purchased Smithfield Foods, for example, it gained control over an entire quarter of America’s pork production and tens of thousands of acres of Midwestern farmland. Using federal preemption to shield entities aligned with the Chinese Communist Party directly undermines national security.
The SOB Act also defies core conservative beliefs about good stewardship.
If America is to remain a city on a hill, how can we allow Congress to nullify laws primarily aimed at alleviating the suffering and extreme confinement of farmed animals, whose lives are miserable enough already? Locking a mother pig in a crate so narrow she cannot even turn around for months at a time is a morally repugnant practice to which most Americans are opposed. By undermining the financial viability of more humane farming practices, the bill would ensure American agriculture fails to innovate or reflect our values.
Beyond animal welfare, industrial farms bolstered by the SOB Act disregard environmental stewardship and the rule of law. Not only do they generate massive amounts of water and air pollution, believed to be a significant factor in Iowa’s rising cancer rates, they also routinely exploit America’s broken immigration system by relying on undocumented labor and guest-worker H-2A visa loopholes to undercut fair wages and skirt safety requirements. A principled conservative framework demands accountability, but the SOB Act would offer the opposite.
The SOB Act is now at a critical juncture. While the House of Representatives embedded the provision into its version of the Farm Bill, the Senate Agriculture Committee rightly stripped it out, following broad bipartisan pushback. Soon, lawmakers will head into conference committee negotiations to determine whether the future of American agriculture will include this detrimental provision.
True conservatives must hold the line where Congresswoman Hinson and her colleagues have failed. It is time for Congress to defend state sovereignty, protect the free market, and honor the moral convictions of Americans by killing the Save Our Bacon Act once and for all.