“This is demonic stuff.”
“It’s downright abusive.”
“That sounds like torture to me.”
It causes “physical problems and psychological anguish.”
These are quotes describing the pork industry’s standard practice of confining pregnant pigs in tiny crates, called gestation crates, which are so small that the pigs can’t even turn around. Millions of pigs in the US are locked in these crates at any given time, and they’re in them for virtually their entire lives.
Those damning quotes, however, weren’t uttered by animal rights activists, but, rather, by pundits and politicians from across the political spectrum. In order: far-right commentator Mike Cernovich, Fox News host Tomi Lahren, liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, and Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Veronica Escobar (D-TX).
These are just a few of a surprisingly bipartisan collection of politicos who’ve come to vocally oppose gestation crates, which have long been a hidden farming practice but are now at the center of a high-level fight in Congress. At issue, specifically, is a piece of legislation called the Save Our Bacon Act that would invalidate state laws that ban the crates.
For decades, the meat industry has been able to reliably depend on congressional Republicans going to bat for its interests. But the fight over gestation crates now shows that previously solid support may be crumbling at the edges. Taken together, the building opposition to gestation crates demonstrates how animal welfare — often considered a largely liberal concern — has become increasingly bipartisan.
The Save Our Bacon Act, briefly explained
Although congressional Republicans have traditionally voted in line with industry, that isn’t the case with the general public, who tend to vote in favor of animal welfare issues when they’re on the ballot.
In the early 2000s, voters in purple Florida and deep-red Arizona approved ballot measures to ban the use of gestation crates. Some prominent conservatives stuck their neck out on the issue, too. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the hard-right conservative, was a spokesperson for the Arizona proposition, while Matthew Scully — a senior speechwriter for President George W. Bush — published the book Dominiona rousing call for animal protection written from a conservative Christian perspective.
Then, in the following years, a mix of red, purple, and blue states passed laws similar to those in Arizona and Florida.
But, in 2016 and 2018, voters in Massachusetts and California went a step further than other states when they overwhelmingly approved ballot measures that not only prohibited in-state farmers from caging pregnant pigs but also prohibited their supermarkets and restaurants from selling pork from caged pigs, no matter where they were raised. (Disclosure: I worked on the Massachusetts ballot measure in 2016.)
In response, meat industry groups — led by the National Pork Producers Council — sued California and Massachusetts to repeal the laws and worked with Republican members of Congress to introduce legislation to do the same. The groups argued the laws would raise production costs for farmers and food prices for consumers.
The legislation, however, didn’t get far, and the industry lost each lawsuit.
After this string of losses, the pork industry groups have tried again, this time with an effort called the Save Our Bacon Act, which would overturn Massachusetts’ and California’s laws and prevent future similar ones. Despite perhaps surprising pushback from a group of House Republicans, in April, the House included the Save Our Bacon Act in its version of the Farm Bill, the large legislative package that covers much of America’s agricultural and nutrition policy and is typically reauthorized every five years.
The next step is for the Senate to finalize its own version of the Farm Bill — and then, the two versions would need to be reconciled. It’s uncertain whether the Save Our Bacon Act will make it into the Senate’s final version, and, so far, things don’t look good for its proponents. The legislation didn’t make it into the draft, and one of its Republican cosponsors, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), recently withdrew his support for it.
With Republicans controlling the House and Senate, and congressional Republicans historically voting in line with what the meat industry wants, the decline in enthusiasm and breaking of ranks on this issue reveals a shift in the politics of animal welfare. What happened?
People don’t like to see animals in tiny cages
Despite its apparent faltering, this is the furthest that the Save Our Bacon Act has gotten in Congress, which means that, for many members, it’s the first time they — and the pundit class that influences political debates — have learned about gestation crates. And when most people learn about them, they don’t like them.
“When I pull out my phone and I show [members of Congress] what a gestation crate is, the shock in their eyes is so clear and present,” Josh Balk, of the animal welfare group the Accountability Board, told me. “It is so obviously cruel and inhumane that it does not matter where someone is on the political spectrum to come to that conclusion.” (Disclaimer: I worked at the nonprofit Humane World for Animals from 2012 to 2017, where Balk also worked.)
A 2025 poll found that 84 percent of Americans outright oppose caging pigs, while only 10.5 percent approve of the practice. And when asked about factory farming practices overall, Democrats are actually only slightly more likely to oppose them than Republicans.
So it makes sense, then, that the National Pork Producers Council seems to be actively avoiding showing people what gestation crates look like. Its X timeline is filled with posts about the Save Our Bacon Act but includes no pictures of pigs in the crates.
The National Pork Producers Council didn’t respond to an interview request for this article.
Conservatives have also found reasons beyond animal cruelty to criticize the Save Our Bacon Act, according to Liam Gray, executive director and founder of the Wilberforce Institute, a conservative and libertarian animal welfare group.
“Regardless of the political perspective you’re coming from, there’s a whole lot of reasons to be against it,” Gray told me.
For example, there’s the question of states’ rights. Some prominent Republican elected officials don’t buy the pork group’s argument that California and Massachusetts can’t set animal welfare standards for food products from other states sold within their borders. Others say that the will of California and Massachusetts voters shouldn’t be overturned.
On top of causing a rift among Republicans, the legislative fight has even caused many pork farmers and companies to criticize the National Pork Producers Council. Some farmers never used crates in the first place, finding them cruel, while many have already switched to crate-free systems and want their industry to move on from the issue.
The fight over gestation crates could be just a temporary schism between Republicans and the meat industry, but there are other signs that animal welfare is now breaking more across party lines — most notably, the conservative push to also reduce animal testing. Gray, for his part, is confident it’s all a harbinger of what’s to come. “More and more, the fight for animal protection is less about left versus right, and more about people versus special interests,” he said.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!
