DOJ, Big Pork, and Congress Target Cage-Free Laws

Dear friend,

The U.S. Department of Justice has just filed an outrageous lawsuit against California’s laying-hen welfare laws. And this isn’t just about Prop 12, the landmark anti-confinement measure approved by voters in 2018. The DOJ has broadened the legal attack to include Proposition 2 (passed 17 years ago, in 2008!) and AB 1437, a bipartisan bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010 that requires that all eggs sold in California come from cage-free hens.

We are rising up to defend these laws—a trio of laws that consumers, farmers, state lawmakers, and voters overwhelmingly supported at the time and that now command tremendous support even from the egg industry.

But our legal defense work in federal court in California—we have “intervened” in this DOJ attack on California’s laws—is just the most recent front in a larger battle over farm animal welfare laws in the nation.

Even though we worked to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to reject legal maneuverings from the National Pork Producers Council in its attack on Prop 12, NPPC surrogates have launched a separate line of attack against Massachusetts’ Question 3. That ballot measure, like Prop 12 in California, sets humane housing standards for pigs and hens and also restricts the sale of factory-farmed pork and eggs. We beat pork factory farms in federal district court in Massachusetts, and now we await a ruling in the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Meanwhile, in Congress, Big Pork is pressing its allies to ram through the deceptively named Save Our Bacon Act and the Food Security and Farm Protection Act. These bills are designed to strip states of their authority to adopt and implement the most important farm animal welfare laws in the nation.

In short, we are fighting a three-front war: the DOJ in federal court in California, Big Pork in federal court in Massachusetts, and the NPPC and China’s Smithfield Foods in Congress. We’ve never failed in our defense of these laws, and it’s our goal to maintain that record of success.

I helped design and pass Prop 2 and Question 3, and I also helped launch Prop 12. These are all immensely popular laws, and since their enactment, we’ve won the support of the egg industry to help with a methodical transition to a cage-free future. When a small group of us started the national fight to give hens more space to engage in some normal behaviors, just 2% of eggs sold in America came from cage-free hens. Now that number is nearly 50%, and it’s on a track to grow every year.

But that’s only if we defend the laws on the books. We must prevail in the fight with the Department of Justice and its lawsuit that would disrupt the American egg supply, drive up egg prices, and result in egg imports from factory farms in Mexico and China that would imprison more hens in cages.

If we fail and the DOJ wins the case, all cage-free laws will be at risk. It would undo our progress over the last quarter century in a devastating way. Not only do we not want that, but the egg industry doesn’t want it, either. The Association of California Egg Farmers is also an “intervenor” in this case on our side!

But to take on the DOJ with its limitless resources and the National Pork Producers Council and its enormous bank account, we need you with us. Together, we can protect animals, defend consumers, promote more extensive farming, and ensure the United States never moves backwards in our march to end the cage age in American animal agriculture.

Fighting on three fronts is immensely expensive. Please do donate $25, $50, or $100 today to help us battle the DOJ in court and beat back NPPC and its allies in Congress. I cannot underscore how much is at stake.

And do take a moment to write to your federal lawmakers in opposition to the Save Our Bacon Act in Congress. We cannot allow that destructive legislation to advance.

For all animals,

Wayne Pacelle President Center for a Humane Economy