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Posted on 10/09/2025 10:53:35 AM PDT by Red Badger
I'm in Washington D.C. with about 200 farmers lobbying against the Food Security and Farm Protection Act (aka EATS Act in the Senate) or the Save Our Bacon Act (SOB in the House). This legislative effort at the federal level seeks to overturn California Prop 12 from seven years ago and Massachusetts Question 3. These two states went beyond what 11 states have done in outlawing gestation crates in hog factories. Sows lives in these crates all their lives. They can only stand up and sit; they can't walk or turn around.
While 11 states have outlawed this protocol, California and Massachusetts went a step further and outlawed the sale of pork sourced from piggies born to sows in these despicable gestation crates. Roughly 40 percent of the industry still uses the crates; many operations have voluntarily remodeled to eliminate them. But that's not enough for Big Ag. They're trying, through the upcoming (always upcoming) Farm Bill, to stick the federal government's nose in state governance by overturning these laws.
At the National Press Club yesterday the organizers asked me to be one of the six speakers and here are my comments:
Polyface farm raises about 800 pastured pigs per year in a habitat that honors their pigness--digging, running, discovering, fresh air, new salad bars--the respect in life creates sacredness in their sacrifice for bacon and pork chops. A nation uninterested in happy pigs, or honoring the pigness of pigs, soon loses its moral and ethical framework to honor the Tomness of Tom and Maryness of Mary, or how to ensure happy people.
Our culture is in a crisis of trust. We raise pigs on pasture not because of Prop 12, but because our patrons don't trust factory farming. If Big Ag thinks it can engender trust by promoting a mechanical inanimate view toward life, it's mistaken. Life is not inanimate piles of protoplasmic structure to be manipulated however cleverly and obscenely hubris can imagine.
But as much as I appreciate our farm's pastured livestock, I want to focus on something different: the ability of a group to determine its own governance.
The Bill of Rights constrains the federal government from infringing on numerous freedoms. Animal production systems are not an enumerated purview. In case we've forgotten, the constitution is silent on most things because the objective was robust experimentation--the 50-state experiment--and putting governance as close to the citizenry as possible.
The reason our nation is in the throes of amplified partisan acrimony is because we continue arrogating regulatory intervention to the federal level. This creates an unnecessary and unprecedented winner-to-all environment, which raises the stakes on every policy issue to aggressively partisan levels. If we are ever going to reduce the rage temperature it must start by reducing federal meddling at the state and local level. Remanding governance to the states does numerous things:
1. Reduces partisan hostility by lessening the number of people affected by legislation.
2. Increases diversity by encouraging people to think about how they want to live without demanding everyone else conform.
3. Allows choice in the marketplace exercised at a level more at human or community scale.
4. Enables experimentation in marketplace governance easier to reverse or correct due to scale and scope.
5. Creates a check on industrial/government prejudice against self-governance and local agency in an effort to cater to interests who care not a whit about hog happiness.
Today is day two. We're meeting with elected officials all day.
Is this effort worthwhile?
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Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Porcine Ping!.............
My Favorite California Happy Cows Commercials
"Great milk comes from Happy Cows. Happy Cows come from California."
This was written by Joel Salatin. He is a self-described “Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer”. We get a lot of our meats from his farm in Swoope, VA.
Dominion, not to abuse. Immoral as Some other at practices. There are limits or at least there should be.
Money.
Florida banned the practice in 2002..................
Florida banned the practice in 2002..................
I never watched “Portlandia”, but my sis sent me this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G__PVLB8Nm4
I love farming. I hate Big Ag.
I have three chickens.
They are free range.
We had 4 chickens, but one turned out to be a rooster.
We still have him......
In the freezer.................
Does he have a cape on?
No, he has a freezer bag on.....................
Ha Ha!
That sounds like it may be a fowl pun.
Raises some good points..
I know that before I know what's alleged to be in it or really in it.
"The Bill of Rights constrains the federal government from infringing on numerous freedoms. Animal production systems are not an enumerated purview. In case we've forgotten, the constitution is silent on most things because the objective was robust experimentation--the 50-state experiment--and putting governance as close to the citizenry as possible.
The reason our nation is in the throes of amplified partisan acrimony is because we continue arrogating regulatory intervention to the federal level. This creates an unnecessary and unprecedented winner-to-all environment, which raises the stakes on every policy issue to aggressively partisan levels. If we are ever going to reduce the rage temperature it must start by reducing federal meddling at the state and local level."
Amen, Amen, AMEN!
But - you can still count on at least half of our states remaining CLUELESS when it comes to food production. You know, those states that PRODUCE NEXT TO NOTHING and CONSUME EVERYTHING?!? Those BLUE ones located around the outer edges of America. Yeah - THEM!
Grow your own. Raise Your Own. Learn to FEED yourself. Buy LOCAL when you can. Bake bread. Make your own wine. Go to the Farmer's Market on Saturdays. Make butter. Make cheese. Join a local co-op. Find a Farmer and make him/her your FRIEND...and then marry them, LOL!
We are so BLESSED where we live. We rent our crop land to the local Dairy Farmer. Our other neighbor raises pork and beef. We raise all the 'side dishes' as in tomatoes, peppers, squashes, potatoes, etc.
The third leg of our local stool is a horse ranch; Transportation!
And everyone is a crack shot and a good dancer. ;) Y'all come! Still PLENTY of room for FReepers who want to live a SANE LIFE out here in The Heartland. :)
“In the freezer...”
We raise a beef steer every 18-20 months. In the past I have shared meat with family members and I made up stickers that read: “All Gave Some, Some Gave All’ then the steer’s name and the year.
The only one who didn’t find it amusing was my Lib-Tard Sister who prefers not to KNOW who her food is.
*Rolleyes*
I swear she’s either adopted or the Mailman was her Dad! We are Night and Day. But I hear that happens a lot in families. ;)
Yeah I saw those sows in crates, nearly hairless, pinkish with enough room for them and their babies to get milk for a short time before being separated. “the other white meat”
Overly bred to a certain pig but it ain’t a real pig. They would die out in the sun with their lack of hair and they would have no desire to hit a mud puddle to help with that because all instinct has been bred out of them.
It’s not GMO. It’s too much inbreeding for a specific, unnatural way of raising them.
Kinda like Democrats.....................
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