On 22nd November 2022, plant-based U.S. senator Cory Booker announced a new bill, the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act 2022 (IAA), aimed at reforming the United States food system and addressing the cruelty of factory farming. The IAA seeks to amend the 2023 Farm Bill by addressing some of the cruellest practices in the animal agriculture industry. In particular, the mass on-farm killing of animals in horrifically cruel ways; dangerously fast slaughter lines, which put animals at risk of prolonged deaths; exposure to extreme heat and cold for hours during transport; ineffective stunning that leaves many chickens and turkeys conscious when they enter tanks of scalding water.
Senator Booker said the following: “We’ve seen multiple recent crises that have shined a light on the threat that corporate meat producers and their web of factory farms represent to workers, animals, the environment, and rural communities. Built by agribusinesses, the industrial livestock and poultry system is designed to maximize production– while externalizing risk and liability– to ensure corporate profits even when the system fails. The Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act would place the liability for disasters where it belongs–on the corporations and industrial operators who profit the most from factory farming and ensure farmed animals are not subjugated to cruel and inhumane practices.”
Leah Garcés, president and CEO of Mercy For Animals, one of the animal protection organisations working in coalition with others to support this bill, said the following: “Since its inception almost 100 years ago, the Farm Bill has become a tool that the industrial animal agriculture industry uses to do little else than maximize its profit—to the detriment of consumers, the environment, food system workers, farmers, and farmed animals. As a result, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment in U.S. food system reform: The meat industry has created deep-seated problems that exploit and harm the most vulnerable. It must be the industry’s responsibility to solve these problems. The IAA recognizes this responsibility and affords the industry an opportunity to begin to right these wrongs.”
Matt Bershadker, ASPCA President and CEO, commented the following: “Most Americans would be shocked to learn that taxpayers are often footing the bill when animals on factory farms are killed in cruel ways, and that billions of chickens and turkeys are not legally protected from suffering at slaughter. We applaud Senator Booker for introducing the landmark Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act, which would provide new protections for farmed animals and hold corporations accountable for the true costs of factory farming.”
