States want transparent laws around animal agriculture. A fight in Congress could derail that.

It’s been nearly eight years since Congress reauthorized the farm bill, the massive legislative package that funds programs run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. What used to be passed roughly every five years, the farm bill touches nearly every aspect of agricultural production in the U.S. It puts billions toward conservation programs, nutrition assistance, rural development, crop insurance, and climate-smart practices. But persistent disagreements between lawmakers over these and other programs have stymied the process of passing a new farm bill. The federal government has instead resorted to stop-gap measures and one-year extensions of a small handful of programs. If farmers were hoping to see a new farm bill this year, they may very well be disappointed — as a new schism between the two houses of Congress was made clear this week, when the Senate agricultural committee released a draft of its farm bill that excluded a law known as the Save Our Bacon Act. The measure was included in the House draft farm bill earlier this year with vocal support by Representative G.T. Thompson, who chairs the House agricultural committee. Save Our Bacon, or SOB, would override state and local laws like California’s Prop 12, which bans the sale of pork, chicken, and veal products that come from farms using the most extreme forms of animal confinement, such as gestation crates for hogs. Factory farming operations where animals have the least amount of space to move around result in a lot of manure, which is typically consolidated and stored in lagoons that can pollute the local air and waterways. Advocacy groups argue laws like Prop 12 are common sense and popular among voters who want to know where their food comes from. There are currently 14 states with similar laws on the books, according to the American Meat Producers Association, or AMPA, an industry group that opposes SOB. “It’s just disappointing that we’re even talking about this because the farm bill shoul