Hunter
07/25/25
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and seven other governors across the country is urging Congress to overturn California’s animal welfare law.
The state now requires pork sold in the state to come from animals raised in more humane conditions. It restricts sales of pork from breeding pigs that do not have space to move around in their confinements.
The Gazette reports the pork regulations require that uncooked pork cuts sold in California come from hogs whose mothers are kept in pens that provide at least 24 square feet per sow of space and comply with a list of other related rules.
Reynolds sent a letter this week urging support for legislation reintroduced by a House group that includes Iowa Republicans Ashley Hinson, Randy Feenstra, Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
The letter states in part that livestock producers in the governors’ states should not have to comply with regulations determined by another state’s electorate. They support the right of each state to lawfully regulate livestock production within their own borders, but say when one state tries to regulate another, federal legislation “is appropriate and necessary.”
Hinson said in a statement the “Save Our Bacon Act” legislation, will, quote, “stop out-of-touch activists — who don’t know the first thing about farming — from dictating how Iowa farmers do their job.”
The US Supreme Court upheld the California law in 2023.
Kitty Block, president and CEO of Humane World for Animals, called the proposed legislation “corporate interests trying to get through Congress what they couldn’t achieve in the courts or at the ballot box.”