The Senate’s Farm Invoice framework features a provision from the Farm System Reform Act that may assist curb manufacturing unit farming by offering farmers with alternatives and sources to transition away from working Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). The framework expands the aim of the Regional Conservation Partnership Program to incorporate “facilitating the conversion from concentrated animal feeding operations to climate-friendly agricultural manufacturing programs (together with regenerative grazing, agroforestry, natural, and diversified crop and livestock manufacturing programs).”
Including alternatives for manufacturing unit farm transitions to Farm Invoice priorities is a vital step in the precise route to shift federal funding and sources away from industrial animal agriculture and create a extra simply and sustainable meals system.
The framework additionally features a provision from Senator Booker’s Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act that will make the manufacturing unit farm trade extra accountable for egregiously merciless culling strategies, reminiscent of air flow shutdown, wherein animals undergo a gradual loss of life because of heatstroke.
The annual “depopulation” reporting requirement “Requires the Secretary of Agriculture to compile and make publicly accessible an annual report containing info on the Division’s completion of animal depopulation occasions together with the variety of occasions, geographic area, animal species, technique and value of depopulation, and cause for depopulation.” This can be a essential step towards larger transparency surrounding the therapy and slaughter of cattle.
Animal agriculture has intensified whereas animals, staff, communities, and our surroundings have paid the worth. Because of a few years of advocacy by Farm Sanctuary and like-minded advocates, the brand new Senate Farm Invoice framework acknowledges that it’s extra vital than ever to shift federal funding towards meals manufacturing that serves us all.
Though the Senate Farm Invoice framework represents essential progress, we’d like your assist to defeat a menace to humane legal guidelines within the Home Farm Invoice framework. The Home draft comprises language associated to the Ending Agricultural Commerce Suppression (EATS) Act, which undermines state and native authority to implement animal safety legal guidelines on farms.
