SUBMITTED VIA USPS MAIL

President Joseph Biden
The White House
Office of the President
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

Vice President Kamala Harris
The White House
Office of the Vice President
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Biden and Vice President Harris:

On behalf of Farm Sanctuary and our 1.6 million constituents, we congratulate you on your inauguration and thank you for your efforts to heal, unite, and create a more perfect union reflecting justice and compassion.

We appreciate your commitment to applying scientific and empirical evidence in policy decisions, such as by rejoining the Paris Agreement, and we commend your immediate attention to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, racial equity, and the nation’s physical and economic health.¹ Please recognize that all of these pressing issues can be addressed by confronting the disastrous effects of industrial animal agriculture on animals, the environment, social justice, and public health. As such, we respectfully urge you to consider the following recommendations to shift agriculture to a just and sustainable system.

I. Protect Workers from COVID-19 in Slaughterhouses by Reducing Line Speeds

We applaud your administration’s swift action on this issue by withdrawing the proposed rule to enable an industry-wide increase in chicken slaughter rates from 140 birds per minute to 175 birds per minute, and examining the Trump administration rule that eliminated hog slaughter linespeeds.² We agree that “the health and safety of workers is a national priority and a moral imperative,” and we urge you to reduce slaughter line speeds to stop the spread of COVID-19 in our nation’s slaughterhouses.³ High-speed slaughter poses risks to workers, food safety, and animal welfare, and the risks to workers have been exacerbated by the pandemic.⁴ Yet, in the midst of this crisis, the previous administration allowed significant increases to slaughterhouse line speeds.⁵ As we all know, slaughterhouses have become COVID-19 hotspots, and communities around high-speed slaughterhouses have been disproportionately impacted.⁶ We ask you to go one step further, and please revoke all previously granted poultry and beef line speed waivers and initiate rulemaking to restore slaughter line speed limits for pig slaughter. In addition to reducing animal suffering, these steps will diminish the spread of COVID-19 in slaughter facilities by allowing workers to maintain safer distances on the slaughter line.

II. Support a More Resilient and Equitable Food System

It is imperative “to hold polluters accountable, including those who disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities.”⁷ Yet, government policies have supported a factory farming system that not only causes the suffering of billions of animals raised and killed for food in our nation each year, but also harms communities, threatens human health, perpetuates racial inequity, and destroys natural ecosystems.⁸ Large scale animal production devotes inordinate amounts of land to animal feed production and is a leading contributor to our planet’s greatest threats, including the loss of biodiversity and the climate crisis.⁹ Crowding animals together by the tens of thousands on massive factory farms increases the risk of uncontrollable outbreaks of infectious diseases that could jump to humans, spurring future pandemics.¹⁰ We urge your administration to stop enabling this destructive and inequitable system by taking the following steps toward a more resilient and equitable food system.

III. Support a Sustainable Food System that Offers Real Climate Solutions

“America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners have an important role to play in combating the climate crisis and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, [and] by sequestering carbon in soils, grasses, trees, and other vegetation,” and in specialty crops.¹⁶ We commend your immediate action to investigate the optimal use of government programs to support climate-friendly agricultural practices, but we urge you to go beyond voluntary standards and false solutions. Government programs should not support unsustainable practices or short-sighted responses that exacerbate chronic problems, such as biodigesters that turn animal waste into energy.¹⁷ This is merely a bandaid that “greenwashes” a larger problem, while encouraging further consolidation within animal agriculture, thus perpetuating and worsening imbalances of power and risks to communities. In addressing the climate crisis, we urge your administration to support a more diversified, community centered food system that will sequester carbon in plants, improve our nation’s health and wellbeing, and create new economic opportunities in diverse communities. Please avoid adopting policies that perpetuate the irresponsible practices of industrial animal agriculture.

IV. Promote Public Health by Preventing Sick and Downed Animals from Entering the Food Supply

We urge you to promote public health by directing the Department of Agriculture to prohibit the slaughter of animals too sick or injured to stand or walk, as we requested in a 2014 petition for rulemaking.¹⁸ Congress amended the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act in 2002 to direct the Secretary of Agriculture to investigate and report on issues related to so called “downed” livestock, and to promulgate regulations the Secretary deemed necessary.¹⁹ After confirming mad cow disease in a downed cow in 2003, the Department of Agriculture acted to protect public health, wisely prohibiting the slaughter of downed cows for human consumption. The agency subsequently extended the prohibition to cover downed calves based on concerns about food safety and animal welfare.²⁰ However, despite ample evidence that the slaughter of downed pigs presents the same food safety and animal welfare concerns as cows and calves, the agency has refused to investigate or take action to prevent the slaughter of pigs or other downed animals for human food, risking the spread of illness and disease.²¹ We encourage your administration to take steps to prevent all downed animals from entering the food supply. Enacting such a policy will help protect food safety, reduce the suffering of animals in transport and in slaughterhouses, and encourage agribusiness to take better care of animals on the farm to prevent disease.

Our food system has profound impacts for the health of our people, and we urge this administration to take necessary steps to prevent irresponsible practices and to invest in a more just system that better serves the common good. Imagine a world without food insecurity, where we can feed 350 million more people²² than we do now, a world where trillions of dollars are saved in healthcare costs, and a world where our food system emits 70% fewer carbon emissions.²³ Now, imagine a world where viruses that are likely to cause the next pandemic aren’t circulating through the farms that raise the food we eat, waiting to jump to their first human host. Shifting to a more just and compassionate food system can achieve these outcomes, and we respectfully urge your administration to be a part of this change to a brighter future.

Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration. We wish you and the new administration good health and success mending our nation.

Sincerely,

Farm Sanctuary

Sources:

1 The Biden-Harris Administration Immediate Priorities. (2021, January 20). https://www.whitehouse.gov/priorities/.
2 Executive Order Review Search Results. (2021). Reginfo.gov. https://www.reginfo.gov/public/Forward?SearchTarget=RegReview&textfield=0583-AD85&Image61.x=0&Image61.y=0
3 Exec. Order No. 13999, 3 C.F.R. (January 21, 2021).
4 Mellnik, T., Kindy, K., & Hernández, A. R. (2021, January 4). The Trump Administration Approved Faster Line Speeds at Chicken Plants. Those Facilities are More Likely to Have Covid-19 Cases. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-chicken-covid-coronavirus-biden/2021/01/03/ea8902b0-3a39-11eb-98c4-25dc9f4987e8_story.html.
5 Id.
6 Taylor, C. A., Boulos, C., & Almond, D. (2020). Livestock plants and COVID-19 transmission. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(50), 31706–31715. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2010115117
7 Exec. Order No. 13990, 3 C.F.R. (January 25, 2021).
8 USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. (February 202). Poultry Slaughter 2019 Summary. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/pslaan20.pdf; USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. (April 2019). Poultry Slaughter 2018 Summary. https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/pg15bd88s/p8418w155/7p88cq28g/pslaan19.pdf; CAFOs and Environmental justice: The Case of North Carolina. Environmental Health Perspectives. 121(6), 535–544 (2013).; Fitzgerald, A. J., Kalof, L. & Dietz, T. Slaughterhouses and Increased Crime Rates. Organ. Environ. 22, 158–184 (2009); Mirabelli, M. C., Wing, S., Marshall, S. W. & Wilcosky, T. C. Race, poverty, and potential exposure of middle-school students to air emissions from confined swine feeding operations. Environ. Health Perspect. 114, 591–596 (2006).; Benton, T. G., Bie, C., Harwatt, H., Pudasaini, R. & Wellesley, L. Food system impacts on biodiversity loss Three levers for food. (2021).; Sewell, C. (2019). Removing the Meat Subsidy: Our Cognitive Dissonance Around Animal Agriculture. Journal of International Affairs, 73(1), 307-318. doi:10.2307/26872805 ; EWG Farm Subsidy Database. https://farm.ewg.org/index.php.; House Agriculture Committee. (2019, June 28). Chairwoman Plaskett, Democratic subcommittee members send letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue expressing concerns about CFAP. [Press release]. https://agriculture.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=1980
9 Benton, T. G., Bie, C., Harwatt, H., Pudasaini, R. & Wellesley, L. Food system impacts on biodiversity loss Three levers for food. (2021).
10 Rohr, J. R. et al. Emerging human infectious diseases and the links to global food production. Nat. Sustain. 2, 445–456 (2019).
11 Farm Sanctuary. 2020 Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) Funding Letter. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zaz07Ye2hzF7oj6OYe-l6_jcjDc36qpA/view
12 Farm System Reform Act of 2019. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3221/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22farm+system+reform+act%5C%22%22%5D%7D&r=2&s=2
13 Farm Sanctuary. (2018, April). On the Road in Duplin County: Meet Your Neighbors in North Carolina [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/ZFzDpUUecw8
14 Animal Legal Defense Fund, et al. 2020 Petition for Emergency Rulemaking to address COVID-19 related “depopulation”. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/environmental_health/pdfs/2020-08-25–Emergency-Rulemaking-Petition-to-USDA_Factory-Farm-Depopulation.pdf
15 2020 Request to withdraw the Trump administration’s 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals amicus brief in support of the appellants in Natl. Pork Producers Council v. Ross. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zxp3O5T20rIN-KSH-cRyb2GrjoF6-08c/view
16 The White House. (2021, January 27). Executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/27/executive-order-on tackling-the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad/
17 Food & Water Watch. (2019). Biogas from factory farm waste has no place in a clean energy future. Retrieved from https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/sites/default/files/ib_1906_biogas_manure-2019-web.pdf
18 Farm Sanctuary, et al. 2014 Rulemaking Petition to amend regulations related to the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act and Federal Meat Inspection Act requesting ban of non-ambulatory disabled (NAD) pigs. https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/5faaea60-31ed-4f28-996a-98ca9097b013/Petition-FarmSantuary-060314.pdf?MOD=AJPERES
19 Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter. 7 U.S. Code § 1907. Practices involving nonambulatory livestock. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/7/1907
20 81 Fed. Reg. 46,570 (July 18, 2016); 9 C.F.R. § 309.3(e)
21 Id. at 18.; USDA. 2019 Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) Review of the Rulemaking Petition to amend regulations related to the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act and Federal Meat Inspection Act requesting ban of non-ambulatory disabled (NAD) pigs. https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/5873cfc3-eff4-498f-bbcd-9dff08f0a9c9/14-02-FSIS-Final-Response-091619.pdf?MOD=AJPERES
22 Shepon, A., Eshel G., Noor E., & Milo R. (2018). The opportunity cost of animal based diets exceeds all food losses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(15), 3804–3809. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1713820115
23 Springmann, M., Godfray, H. C. J., Rayner, M., & Scarborough, P. (2016). Analysis and valuation of the health and climate change cobenefits of dietary change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(15), 4146–4151. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1523119113