Section 12006 of the 2026 Farm Bill would invalidate laws in 15 states that ban the cruelest methods of confinement for farm animals, including ballot measures that passed with wide public support.
It would block states from banning the sale of pork from hogs bred in gestation crates, chickens raised in battery cages, and calves raised in veal in crates.
China owns Smithfield, our largest pork producer. Brazilian JBS is our biggest beef company. Section 12006 would destroy U.S. food sovereignty by taking away our right to regulate factory farmed meat production controlled by foreign corporations.
TAKE ACTION: Stop the 2026 House Farm Bill, Including Section 12006 that Strikes Down Animal Welfare Laws!
In 2018, California banned the sale of pork from hogs bred in gestation crates. A majority of the state voted to pass that law (Prop 12) and the US Supreme Court upheld the ballot initiative in 2023. The Farm Bill's Section 12006 is the industry’s attempt to undo the ruling. The top beneficiaries of this move would be foreign corporations.
The U.S. is quickly becoming an agricultural colony of foreign countries. China owns Smithfield, the largest U.S. pork producer; Brazilian JBS is the biggest U.S. beef company; and U.S. corn farmers are the main market for the pesticide companies Syngenta (ChemChina), and BASF and Bayer (German corporations that were part of the Nazi I.G. Farben conglomerate).
What if China doesn't want to comply with bans on caging pregnant and nursing sows to sell its pork? What if Brazil doesn't like Environmental Protection Agency rules on water pollution from its factory farm feedlots? What if Chinese and German pesticide companies get caught giving people cancer or killing "off target" crops that aren't genetically engineered to withstand the toxic herbicides that drift from fields sprayed with their poisons?
These foreign companies go to the U.S. Congress to demand relief! Incredibly, our members of Congress comply, crafting special provisions to exempt bad actors from rules the states and the courts are trying to enforce.
When California voters passed Proposition 12, a ballot initiative to raise the animal welfare standards of food sold in their state, they banned pork from factory farms where pregnant and nursing sows are contained in cages so small that they can’t even move enough to turn around.
Sec. 12006 would let China’s Smithfield strike that law from the books so it doesn’t have to obey it. It says Smithfield has the right to raise their pork however they want no matter what state or local laws say. This is an incredibly dangerous provision, because pork farmers working for Smithfield don’t get to decide how to raise their pigs, China does!
China wants to raise pork in the U.S. the same way it does at home. Before China started to industrialize pork farming in 1995, almost all pork came from small-scale family farms. From 2018 to 2019, African Swine Fever put most Chinese pork farmers out of business. This gave the country the opportunity to rebuild pork production at a hyper-industrial scale. By 2021, small farms were down to 20 percent of pork production and China had started to build "hog hotels" where a single location can have 21 buildings, six stories high, with 660 sows each. In 2025, the largest 39 enterprises produced 41 percent of China's pork production (295 million hogs).
TAKE ACTION: Stop the 2026 House Farm Bill, Including Section 12006 that Strikes Down Animal Welfare Laws!
Personal Information
*SAMPLE TEXT TO YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS*
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Dear [Member of Congress],
I am writing in opposition to Section 12006 of the 2026 House Farm Bill. It would nullify state bans on the sale of pork from hogs bred in gestation crates, chickens raised in battery cages, and calves raised in veal in crates. This would weaken food security and remove protections for farmers, workers, consumers, and the environment, while rolling back animal welfare standards.
Section 12006 would strike down laws in 15 states, including ballot measures that passed with wide public support. It would also stop states from passing new laws regulating agricultural products, creating a disastrous race to the bottom. The bill would undo over a decade of progress made in improving the lives of farm animals. It would reduce consumers’ access to more humane animal products and further encourage the growth of the factory farm industry by eliminating states’ ability to regulate its harmful practices.
Please oppose the 2026 House Farm Bill, while working to remove Section 12006.
Thank you.
[Your Name]