Pork producers wary of HSUS bill in Congress

Pork producers will be keeping a close eye on that HSUS-backed animal rights bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill proposes to set rules around confinement of animals used to produce food purchased by the federal government.  According to Dr. Jen Greiner with the National Pork Producers Council, it’s the first time legislation addressing animal housing—gestation stalls, veal crates and laying hen cages—has been introduced in Congress. 

Greiner doesn’t expect the proposal to gain much traction by itself—but she is concerned its backers might try to tie it to reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act later this year.

“(It’s) the bill that gives USDA the ability to go out and purchase food products to go into the school lunch program, the school breakfast program, and the Women, Infants and Children—or WIC—program,” Greiner says, “and so, as we look at that, obviously those foods are going into federal programs and this legislation could get swept into it.  So, clearly, we’re concerned about that.”

HSUS has been successful with animal rights initiatives at the state level and, to this point, has not shown much interest in pursuing federal legislation.  We asked Greiner if she’s surprised with this move in Congress.

“We did pick this year—an election year for the House of Representatives and part of the Senators—we did pick this year as being a year of potential mischief,” she says, “but (we) really hadn’t seen a whole lot of movement in that direction until last week.  So I guess while we are maybe a little bit surprised that it came this early, (we’re) definitely not shocked.”

The federal government spends more than one billion dollars buying animal products for a variety of programs and agencies, including the national school lunch program, the armed services and federal prisons.

AUDIO: Jen Greiner (4 min MP3)