Eve is here. This issue may not be important to most people, but I’m not enlightened enough to be a Jain, and I believe in the humane treatment of livestock. And these days, there are so few legal and regulatory victories that inconvenience capitalists that we should celebrate them when they come.
Maybe I missed it, but MAHA doesn’t seem to be involved in this issue at all. I know a lot of health and diet fetishists who strive to eat organic food as well as animal products only in places where living things are not abused (admittedly, many certifications are questionable, and few have the time and energy to visit the farms that produce their food to evaluate their practices). Part of that may come from compassion, but it may also come from the belief that animals that receive better treatment taste better and are somehow healthier. Kobe beef is served with beer, massage and even nice music.
By Brian Bienkowski, editor-in-chief of The New Lede. Previously, he served as senior editor of Environmental Health News for nearly a decade and was also the founder, producer, and host of the EJ podcast Agents of Change in EJ from 2020 to 2024.
Amid a series of high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decisions, animal rights activists are claiming a major victory in cases the high court has refused to take up.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request to reconsider Triumph Foods Co. v. Campbell, which sought to invalidate Massachusetts’ animal welfare law, known as Question 3. The appellants had asked the high court to find that federal law preempted the regulations imposed by Massachusetts. The law, similar to California’s Proposition 12, requires pigs, calves and chickens raised on closed farms or sold in the state to be housed with enough room to turn, lie down and stretch.
A brief filed by 24 states with the Supreme Court in support of Triumph Foods said that while Question 3 “appears only to regulate the sale of pork in Massachusetts, its scope is much broader.” State law “denies market access to out-of-state hog producers and processors unless they comply with Massachusetts orders,” the brief said, adding that Question 3 increases the estimated cost of raising sows from between $1,600 and $2,500 to a maximum of $3,400.
Triumph Foods cited a June 25 court ruling in favor of former agrochemical company Monsanto as precedent applicable to its case, arguing that state laws cannot preempt federal regulations. In the Monsanto case, the Supreme Court ruled that federal laws regulating pesticides prohibit states from enforcing claims related to labeling.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, who was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, argued in a written opposition that the petitioners have provided no evidence to support the dire predictions in the complaint that the lawsuit claims “extensive costs for hog farmers.”
The Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the case came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued an opinion in 2025 upholding Question 3.
“We are pleased that the Supreme Court has declined to consider yet another burdensome challenge by the pig industry to the state’s voter-approved farm animal welfare law,” said Rebecca Carey, lead attorney for Humane World for Animals. “This law now has support at all levels of the federal judiciary, confirming that Question 3 is constitutional and not preempted by federal law.”
Triumph Foods did not respond to a request for comment on the petition’s denial.
The petition comes as challenges to the California and Massachusetts laws are also in the federal policy debate, with industry groups urging Congress to include a provision often referred to as “our bacon law” in the next farm bill. The House draft included such a provision, but the Senate version released last week did not.
“America’s pork producers will continue to advocate for amendments to Prop. 12 in the official Farm Bill just as our livelihoods depend on it, because it is,” Rob Brenneman, president of the National Pork Producers Council, which led the advocacy for the Save Our Bacon Act and spearheaded the legal challenge to Prop. 12 before the Supreme Court, said in a statement.
But the Save Our Bacon Act faces an uphill battle. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York tweeted that he opposed any form of the Save Our Bacon Act being included in the Senate Farm Bill, vowing to “fight to stop it.”
“Leader Schumer’s opposition to the Save Our Bacon Act is a major blow to Big Pork’s campaign to repeal animal welfare laws and override the will of voters.”
Matthew Dominguez, executive director of Compassion in World Farming, a farm animal welfare organization. “The Senate Farm Bill’s exclusion of this dangerous provision shows that Congress has heard the growing voices of opposition to this industry’s power grab.”
