BOSTON — Members of Massachusetts’ congressional delegation are criticizing a proposal in Congress that would preempt a 2016 voter-approved state law restricting the sale of eggs and meat from caged confined animals.
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives recently approved a farm bill that contains proposed updates to food and agriculture programs to reduce the federal government’s costs.
But the measure, the first farm bill reauthorization since 2018, also includes a provision that would preempt state-level animal welfare and agricultural protection laws in California, Massachusetts and several other Democratic-led states.
That has prompted pushback from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats, who are vowing to oppose the plan when it comes up for a vote in the chamber. The reauthorization bill needs a 60-vote margin in the Senate to pass, and will require support from some Democrats to pass.
Warren said Democrats have “significant concerns” about the House’s version of the bill, calling on Senate leaders to remove the “overreaching and harmful” preemption provision.
“This is a highly controversial and poisonous policy that ignores the will of the people,” Warren said in a prepared statement. “These state laws were overwhelmingly supported by a popular vote — they shouldn’t be overridden because of big-dollar lobbying.”
Republicans who pushed the bill through the House of Representatives on a largely party line vote two weeks ago said the proposed changes are based on feedback from the agricultural industry and are aimed at providing relief to farmers facing rising production costs, increasing bankruptcies and economic uncertainty.
If approved, the measure would preempt Question 3, which banned the sale of eggs, veal and pork from farm animals held in cage-confined conditions. The egg and veal requirements took effect in early 2023, but the restrictions on pork sales were delayed amid multiple legal challenges.
Massachusetts is one of only a handful of states that set stringent animal welfare requirements on the sale of bacon, chops and other pork products.
Although the Bay State isn’t home to any large-scale pig farms or pork producers, animal welfare groups that advocated for the law say it improves conditions for the country’s 6 million breeding sows, who they say spend a large portion of pregnancies confined in metal cages that prohibit their movement.
“These states have already acted to limit the cruel confinement of farm animals because voters believe animals should at least be able to turn around, extend their limbs and lie down comfortably,” Sara Amundson, president of the Humane World Action Fund, formerly The Humane Society, said in a prepared statement.
The legislation “isn’t about helping farmers or feeding families, it’s about preserving a cruel industrial system most Americans reject,” she said.
“Those who voted for this bill chose willingly to ignore that emerging consensus and instead sided with a handful of Big Pork producers trying to rewrite the rules after losing time and time again at the ballot box and in the courts.”
The nation’s $26-billion-a-year pork industry has pushed back against the state bans, arguing they will require expensive, industry-wide changes that will lead to higher costs nationwide for pork chops, ribs and bacon.
States that have banned gestation cages import a majority of the pork sold and the laws, as written, place an unfair financial burden on pork farmers in other states, according to the pork industry.
A group of Midwest pork producers sued Massachusetts to block the law from going into effect, arguing that it would “impose costly mandates that substantially interfere with commerce” in pork-producing states.
In court filings, lawyers for the pork industry argued the law was preempted by the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which is aimed at protecting consumers from tainted meat and byproducts, and violated interstate commerce statutes and is “discriminatory” because it gives Massachusetts farmers a competitive advantage over out-of-state companies.
A federal appeals court in October rejected the last-ditch effort to repeal the law. In the ruling, the First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the meat industry’s arguments and cited data showing pork production in Massachusetts decreased from 2021 to 2022, and held that the rules are designed to prevent animal cruelty, not to limit interstate commerce.
The farm bill reauthorization still faces a long slog through Capitol Hill and must also pass the Senate before landing on President Donald Trump’s desk for consideration.
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.