Gestation Crates for Pigs: California and Massachusetts’ Fight Against Cruel Farming in the Farm Bill

The fight over the use of gestation crates for breeding pigs has moved from state ballot boxes to the halls of Congress. A provision in the new Farm Bill, currently being debated in the United States Senate, could nullify animal welfare laws that were overwhelmingly approved by voters in California and Massachusetts.

At the center of the dispute is the “Save Our Bacon Act.” While the legislation has been proposed in various forms for years, it gained significant momentum when the House of Representatives passed its version of the Farm Bill in late April 2026, including the language intended to strip states of their ability to regulate these farming practices.

The Controversy of Gestation Crates

For decades, most of America’s approximately 6 million female breeding pigs, or sows, have been kept in gestation crates. These tiny enclosures are designed to allow producers to monitor pregnancies and control feeding more closely, but animal welfare advocates argue they constitute widespread abuse.

The crates are so restrictive that highly social and intelligent pigs are unable to walk or even turn around. This confinement often leads to chronic stress, with many animals engaging in repetitive behaviors such as biting the bars of their crates. Animal welfare scientist Temple Grandin has compared the experience of living in a gestation crate to “forcing a human to live in an airline seat.”

In 2025, nearly 130 million pigs were raised for meat in the United States, many of whom were born to sows confined in these enclosures until their reproductivity declined around age five.

State Mandates vs. Federal Nullification

The legal battle began at the state level. In 2016, Massachusetts voters passed a measure to prohibit the use of gestation crates and the sale of pork from farms that use them. In 2018, 63 percent of California voters passed a nearly identical law. Because these two states represent nearly 15 percent of the U.S. Population, the laws effectively forced many national pork producers to change their practices to maintain access to those markets.

The pork industry has challenged these laws in court multiple times, arguing they violate the dormant commerce clause. However, these legal efforts have failed, including a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of California’s law.

With legal challenges unsuccessful, industry groups have pivoted to federal legislation. The “Save Our Bacon Act” aims to provide a federal override of such state-level mandates. While some proponents see it as a way to prevent a “patchwork of similar state laws” that could drive up farming costs, others view it as an attempt to bypass the democratic will of voters.

A Divided Industry

The push for federal nullification has exposed deep divisions within the American pork industry. Large-scale producers like Smithfield Foods have publicly supported the federal legislation. Meanwhile, other major companies have expressed strong opposition due to the capital they have already invested in compliance.

Many in the industry, including Clemens, have invested significant capital (and human capital) to meet the regulations set by the people of California and Massachusetts. Accordingly, Clemens remains vehemently opposed to any legislative or regulatory action that would overrule.

A Clemens Foods spokesperson

An April 2025 estimate from the USDA indicated that 27 percent of U.S. Hog producers had already made, or were in the process of making, investments to comply with state crate bans. For many farmers, overturning these laws would render those investments useless.

Brent Hershey, a hog farmer in Pennsylvania who transitioned his operations to group housing, expressed opposition to the federal move. He characterized the legislation as “really a Save Our Crate Act.”

Economic Impact and Political Resistance

Economic arguments have also fueled the debate. The National Pork Producers Council has argued that complying with these laws costs producers at least $3,400 per sow. Conversely, farmers like Hershey have reported much lower transition costs, around $600 per sow, while noting that crate-free systems can lead to higher piglet production and lower premature death rates among sows.

A study by economists at North Dakota State University and the USDA examined pork prices in California and Massachusetts between January 2024 and January 2026. The researchers found that pork prices rose by 73 cents per pound (a 15 percent increase) in California and 63 cents in Massachusetts. However, the study noted that more than half of that increase could be attributed to “retail amplification,” where supermarkets add a premium for such meat beyond actual production costs.

The Battle in the Senate

As the Senate drafts its own version of the Farm Bill, the political divide remains sharp. While Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida introduced an amendment to strip the “Save Our Bacon Act” from the bill, the House Rules committee did not allow a vote on the measure.

Several Senate Democrats have signaled that the act is a major point of contention. Senators Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, Alex Padilla, Cory Booker, and Adam Schiff have all expressed opposition to the legislation.

Here’s a highly controversial and poisonous policy that ignores the will of the people. These state laws were overwhelmingly supported by a popular vote — they shouldn’t be overridden because of big-dollar lobbying.

Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren

It makes no sense for Republicans in Congress to bigfoot individual states’ efforts to set higher food safety and animal welfare standards — especially those implemented through a mandate from large majorities of those states’ voters.

Senator Chris Van Hollen

The position of Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the ranking chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, remains unclear. Klobuchar is currently running for governor of Minnesota, a state that ranks as the second-largest pork producer in the country, and the agribusiness sector has been a significant donor to her 2026 campaign committee.

Historical Context of Industry Regulation

The current struggle over gestation crates follows a long history of the meat industry resisting transparency and regulation. In the early 2000s, industry groups successfully lobbied for laws in approximately two dozen states to make it illegal to videotape inside farms following the release of undercover footage documenting animal abuse.

Advocates point to further patterns of industry influence, noting that animal farms are often exempt from various pollution and labor laws, as well as many state animal cruelty laws. A recent analysis in the journal PLOS Climate found that 98 percent of meat and dairy companies’ environmental claims could be categorized as greenwashing.

Will Potter, author of Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable, suggests the industry often relies on a “homestead narrative” to push for measures that would limit oversight.