When you think about the 2026 farm bill — but of course you do! — you’d be forgiven if root canals suddenly seemed alluring.
The bill is a massive package of federal legislation that includes regulations for everything from rural health and nutrition to multinational farming practices. It is the latest iteration of a bill signed into law in 2018. The legislation expired in 2023 and has been slogging through Congress with annual extensions. The current version lasts until Sept. 30.
It’s unlikely anyone has read the nearly 1,000-page tome, outside of animal welfare activists and special-interest groups, namely owners of large pig factories. The bill passed the House in April and is expected to be unveiled in the Senate in early June. Of particular interest to people who value the humane treatment of animals over, say, hot dogs, the bill includes the proposed Save Our Bacon Act, which is designed to override state animal welfare requirements and potentially a host of other state and local regulations.
The act aims to reverse California’s Proposition 12 and Massachusetts’s Question 3, which voters passed in 2018 and 2016, respectively, to prohibit the sale of food products derived from livestock raised in extreme confinement — that is, without enough space for animals to turn around and stretch their limbs. This hardly seems an unreasonable request for a modern, enlightened society. Besides, a majority of residents in those two states, among several others, want it that way.
Whatever happened to the Republican love affair with states’ rights? I guess it all depends on whose bacon is getting fried. Though it’s almost irresistibly amusing to poke fun with punny takes, this legislation is serious and matters beyond the humane treatment of animals intended for slaughter and consumption. (Globally, humans slaughter more than 80 billion land-raised animals annually, and the numbers are climbing.)
Should the Save Our Bacon Act make the final version of the bill, federal legislators would be undermining states’ constitutional rights to self-determination, while potentially strengthening foreign countries such as China. In 2013, the Chinese company WH Group purchased Smithfield Foods, America’s largest pork producer, with a $4 billion loan from the state-owned Bank of China.
Smithfield Foods is a member of the National Pork Producers Council, which filed a lawsuit challenging Proposition 12 in 2019. That case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in California’s favor and memorably produced Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s majority opinion in 2023 that “while the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list.”
The Save Our Bacon Act could nullify hundreds of state and local laws affecting livestock production, according to a report from Harvard Law School. This would mean that scores of farmers who have retrofitted their factories to meet higher standards would have spent their money needlessly. These include, it must be said, Smithfield, even though the company still lobbies against the rules. It also would end legislative progress on animal wellness issues.
The Senate Agriculture Committee could issue its version without the Save Our Bacon Act provision, but this largely will be determined by Republican Chairman John Boozman (Arkansas) and ranking Democrat Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota). At a National Association of Farm Broadcasting event in April before the House passed its bill, Boozman indicated that the Senate version wouldn’t have the Save Our Bacon Act.
Klobuchar hasn’t committed to killing the act, perhaps because she’s running for governor of Minnesota, the second-largest pork-producing state. If the Senate committee does cut the provision, Iowa’s two Republican senators, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, co-sponsors of the Senate counterpart to the Save Our Bacon Act, could try to re-add it as an amendment. But ultimately, the two chambers will have to reconcile the bills in conference.
Or, if history is our guide, not.
The Senate should reject the act for several logical reasons. A 2024 study by NSF, a public health and safety nonprofit, found that nearly 70 percent of Americans say that animal wellness is important to their purchasing decisions. Most Americans would instinctively oppose handing over state jurisdictional power to foreign countries, especially China. It is philosophically and economically un-American to punish small- and medium-size farms to fund corporate interests. Finally, scientific evidence shows that stress and improper handling of farm animals before slaughter can lead to lower-quality meat — and taste.
If enough senators join the act’s supporters in the House to infringe upon the rights of citizens not to participate in animal cruelty, their next act may be to save their own bacon.
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