The House Agriculture Committee is moving forward with a Farm Bill that strips voter-approved animal welfare laws, shields industrial agriculture from accountability, and ignores animal fighting.
Here’s what you need to know and what you can do.
The 2026 Farm Bill, formally known as the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, is working its way through the House Agriculture Committee this week, and animal advocates have every reason to be alarmed.
This legislation doesn’t just fail animals. It actively works against them, rolling back hard-won protections, blocking new ones, and handing wins to the very industries that have long profited from cruelty.
What’s Being Erased: Prop 12 and Question 3
Perhaps the most devastating provision in the bill is its direct attack on voter-approved farm animal welfare laws.
California’s Proposition 12 and Massachusetts’ Question 3 were passed by more than 10 million voters in two separate statewide elections. These laws ensure that pigs raised for their flesh and hens exploited for eggs in those states have enough room to stand, lie down, turn around, and fully extend their limbs. Very basic, minimal housing standards.
What’s Being Left Out: The FIGHT Act and SAFE Act
The bill’s chairman, Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), chose to omit three bipartisan animal welfare measures that had broad support and real urgency:
- The FIGHT Act would give law enforcement stronger tools to combat dogfighting and cockfighting, operations that are not only cruel to animals but deeply tied to narcotics trafficking, illegal firearms, and cartel activity. Investigators have documented American cockfighters traveling from multiple states to participate in illegal international competitions.
- The SAFE Act would federally ban horse slaughter in the U.S., as well as the export of American horses abroad for slaughter. This practice serves economically marginal foreign markets while causing immense suffering to horses.
These address documented, ongoing harms.
The Bigger Picture
This Farm Bill has things completely backwards.
It takes power away from states. It lets huge corporations avoid accountability for meeting basic animal welfare standards. And it ignores the violent criminal networks tied to dogfighting and cockfighting, which threaten animals, farms, and public safety.
The animals caught in the middle of all this – the pigs in gestation crates, the hens in battery cages, the roosters on tethers, the horses on transport trucks – have no representation in the committee room.
That’s where you come in.
What You Can Do Right Now
Call your U.S. representative and both of your senators at 202-225-3121.
Tell them:
- Oppose the House Farm Bill in its current form.
- Strip out the provisions attacking Prop 12 and Question 3.
- Add in the FIGHT Act and the SAFE Act.
Then follow up in writing. Calls matter. Written messages matter.
Animals have no seat at the table in Congress. We do.
If we want laws that reflect our values, we must speak up when it matters most.
