The US animal protection organization Mercy for Animals (MFA) has released a new exposé of a pig farm in Nebraska. The investigation documents extreme suffering by mother pigs kept in crates barely larger than their bodies. The investigators alleged to have obtained footage of mother pigs collapsing for hours in their own waste, often dehydrated, sometimes suffering prolonged, painful deaths. This is not an exception in US factory farms, where these events are standard, so the organisation is just using it as an example of what is going on and as ammunition for their campaign against the EATS Act that would prevent states from banning cruel practices in farms.
Alex Cragun, Director of Mercy For Animals’ Government Affairs and Public Policy team, said to Unchainedtv, “This investigation happened in the fall of 2022 in Nebraska, and it was over the course of a number of months recording and documenting the abuse and the atrocities that are happening there. What is unfortunate — and this would be considered fairly standard industry practice with regard to the treatment of pigs — is pigs not having the ability to freely move.”
MFA used this latest expose to highlight the importance of stopping the EATS Act. This legislative proposal eliminates the states’ authorities power to regulate anything that happens on farms, and it establishes a mechanism in which individual actors or organizations can challenge state laws if they believe that they would inhibit their ability to engage in interstate commerce.
The EATS Act is an old proposal and it was initially called the King Amendment, but did not make it into the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills. Then it was rebranded as the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act and has been reintroduced recently in Congress by Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Congresswoman Ashley Henson (R-IA).
MFA is asking US citizens to contact their representatives urging them to vote against the EATS Act or any legislation that would restrict states from regulating farm activities as part of the Farm Bill.
