GOP Lawmakers Pushing the Save Our Bacon Act Slaughtered in Midterm Elections

In Colorado, trophy-hunting groups came up short with Amendment 83 to create a constitutional right to hunt and trap on this year’s ballot, which could have nullified two ballot measures — one restricting steel traps and another limiting bear baiting — that an earlier generation of voters had approved.

In a way, two other ballot measures — Question 3 in Massachusetts and Prop 12 in California — were also at stake in this year’s elections. The farm animal welfare measures, adopted in 2016 and 2018, respectively, forbid extreme confinement of sows and other animals on factory farms and restrict selling fresh pork if the meat comes from sows immobilized in coffin-sized crates.

Prodded by the Iowa-based National Pork Producers Council and its biggest member, China’s Smithfield Foods, some Republicans in the U.S. House — mainly lawmakers in Iowa, Minnesota, and North Carolina, the three biggest pig-producing states — have been pushing for repeal of Question 3 and Prop 12. They’ve been fixated on federally preempting the state ballot measures, and their vehicle is the Save Our Bacon Act, unaffectionately referred to as the SOB Act. 

The members of Congress backing the bill — again, principally from Iowa, Minnesota, and North Carolina — got wiped out in the midterm elections last Tuesday. They were facing gale-force winds that propelled Democrats into office, but they did themselves no favors by pushing an idea that, according to one poll, Iowans opposed by a two-to-one margin.

An Electoral Bloodbath for Lawmakers Seeking Repeal of Prop 12

In all, there were 11 Republican lawmakers seeking election to the House and Senate who lost their elections in these three top hog-producing states. Four Iowa lawmakers, including SOB House author Rep. Ashley Hinson, went down to defeat, along with Reps. Zach Nunn, R-3rd, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-1st, and 2nd district candidate Joe Mitchell, running for the seat long occupied by House SOB leader Hinson, who, in turn, was seeking to replace Sen. Joni Ernst, the leader of the Senate SOB Act, who chose not to run for reelection.

Just north of Iowa’s 2nd district is Minnesota’s 1st district, and there, Rep. Brad Finstad, who was also outspoken in seeking to repeal Prop 12, appears to have come up just short in his re-election effort. His district is the biggest pig-producing district in the state.

And in North Carolina, where China’s Smithfield Foods has major production capacity, there were six GOP lawmakers and candidates who appear to have lost their House races. Republicans Richard Hudson, Brad Knott, Virginia Foxx, Tim Moore, and Addison McDowell all lost. Anti-Prop 12 Republican lawmaker Rep. Chuck Edwards withdrew from his reelection campaign in August, and Democrat Jamie Ager subsequently defeated Republican stand-inJennifer Balkcom for the open seat.

Our sister organization, Animal Wellness Action, along with the American Meat Producers Association, an unrelated organization that also supports protecting Prop 12, took aim at many of the lawmakers trying to nullify the voter-approved measure. Collectively, the groups spent millions working to defeat Rep. Ashley Hinson and opposed many of the lawmakers working to repeal Prop 12. Senator-elect Josh Turek, D-Iowa, strongly opposed the SOB Act, and one pollster involved in the race indicated that the ads rightly tagging Hinson as an ally of China and Smithfield Foods turned off rural voters.

In addition, Animal Wellness Action conducted major campaigns against Reps. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa.-8th, and Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis.-3rd, because they voted to repeal Prop 12, and also reneged on their commitments to pass the FIGHT Act, which sought to crack down on dogfighting and cockfighting.

I cannot think of a national election where animal issues resonated so significantly, with the lawmakers’ close association with China adding velocity to the gale-force winds that pushed so many GOP lawmakers over an electoral cliff.

Two Republican leaders who led the fight against the SOB Act — U.S. Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla.-13th, and Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y.-2nd — withstood those fierce winds and won re-election. Showing their independence from China and their sympathy for common-sense animal care standards proved a boon for them.

Agriculture Committee Chairman Doomed Electoral Prospects of Colleagues

Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa.-15th, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, appears still to be trying to include a provision in any final Farm bill to repeal Prop 12 and to take away the rights of states to protect food safety and prevent animal cruelty by limiting sales of pork that comes from these mega-factory farms.

Thompson has been doggedly pursuing the repeal of Prop 12 even after a 2023 ruling from the current conservative U.S. Supreme Court — with the majority opinion written by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch and signed by fellow conservatives Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett — upholding the right of California to pass and implement Prop 12.

Thompson hung his conference members out to dry during the midterms, with 10 of his agriculture committee members who’d worked to repeal Prop 12 ousted in the general election or in primaries. Then add in the other GOP lawmakers not serving on the committee but hailing from Iowa, Minnesota, and North Carolina, and the Prop 12-related political body count soars to an astonishing 19.

China’s Smithfield Foods and the National Pork Producers Council did little to rescue these lawmakers as animal advocates and humane farming groups highlighted their decision to side with China and its high-rise factory farms over American family farmers.

Ten million voters approved Prop 12 and Question 3 in landslide elections, and there has been a string of 21 federal court rulings upholding these laws and other similar farm animal welfare laws as proper. And in the midterms, Thompson’s Republican colleagues were destroyed at the ballot box.

The idea of including the SOB Act, or any derivative of it, after this series of judicial and electoral outcomes would be foolhardy. The 10-year attack on farm animal welfare ballot measures is, for all practical purposes, over. These political maneuverings should serve as a cautionary tale in American politics for those who wish to vitiate states’ rights and cuddle up with China’s proxies in agriculture.