In fact, this trade group takes its disregard for animal welfare even further. It’s not only working furiously to prevent animal welfare improvements for pigs on factory farms, it actively works to crush efforts to protect any farm animals. For example, NPPC is behind a campaign to squelch a federal bill to improve the treatment of egg-laying hens, HR 3798, despite the fact that both the egg industry and animal protection groups back the bill.
In other words, the NPPC wants no rules protecting pigs from abuse, and it’s against even modest anti-cruelty regulations in other agribusiness sectors in which it holds no stake, even when those farmers who would be affected by the new rules support them.
It’s difficult to imagine a trade group more out of touch with mainstream American sentiments about how animals ought to be treated. Remember what the muckraking writer Upton Sinclair famously said about the difficulty of getting a person to understand something when his salary depends on not him understanding it.
Fortunately for pigs, the NPPC is increasingly isolated in its unwillingness to understand what is plainly happening. Indeed, the future is so clear that Meat & Poultry magazine wrote in a recent article, “This is no longer a debate about the viability of gestation crates in hog production, but rather a discussion about how producers will respond to meet expectations.”
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