The Senate’s Farm Bill framework includes a provision from the Farm System Reform Act that will help curb factory farming by providing farmers with opportunities and resources to transition away from operating Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). The framework expands the purpose of the Regional Conservation Partnership Program to include “facilitating the conversion from concentrated animal feeding operations to climate-friendly agricultural production systems (including regenerative grazing, agroforestry, organic, and diversified crop and livestock production systems).”
Adding opportunities for factory farm transitions to Farm Bill priorities is a critical step in the right direction to shift federal funding and resources away from industrial animal agriculture and create a more just and sustainable food system.
The framework also includes a provision from Senator Booker’s Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act that would make the factory farm industry more accountable for egregiously cruel culling methods, such as ventilation shutdown, in which animals suffer a slow death due to heatstroke.
The annual “depopulation” reporting requirement “Requires the Secretary of Agriculture to compile and make publicly available an annual report containing information on the Department’s completion of animal depopulation events including the number of events, geographic region, animal species, method and cost of depopulation, and reason for depopulation.” This is a crucial step toward greater transparency surrounding the treatment and slaughter of farm animals.
Animal agriculture has intensified while animals, workers, communities, and our environment have paid the price. Thanks to many years of advocacy by Farm Sanctuary and like-minded advocates, the new Senate Farm Bill framework recognizes that it is more important than ever to shift federal funding toward food production that serves us all.
Although the Senate Farm Bill framework represents crucial progress, we need your help to defeat a threat to humane laws in the House Farm Bill framework. The House draft contains language related to the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act, which undermines state and local authority to enforce animal protection laws on farms.
