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Nebraska Farm Bureau: Keep egg measure out of the farm bill
The president of Nebraska Farm Bureau says federal legislation dictating the size of cages for egg-laying hens “has no place in the Farm Bill”.
Steve Nelson was reacting to reports that Senate Ag Committee chair Debbie Stabenow plans to include the so-called Egg Bill in her markup of the Senate Farm Bill, which is expected to take place next week.
“The fact that Debbie Stabenow would even consider starting the discussion on a new farm bill by including legislation initiated and advocated for by extremist organizations is a slap in the face to American farm families,” Nelson says. “Including legislation to set a ‘one size fits all’ standard for the housing and treatment of egg-laying hens would set a dangerous precedent and only encourage further bullying of farm families by activists through baseless legal actions and public smear campaigns.”
Nelson says such action by Stabenow “threatens the prospects of passing a much needed farm bill”.
“This is a huge issue and it certainly takes the regulatory control of government well beyond where we’ve been and into an area where it’s just completely unnecessary to have this kind of regulation in the farm bill,” Nelson says. “I still hope that there’s some way that some common sense will prevail and they’ll say ‘no, this doesn’t need to be in the farm bill’—and then they can move on.”
Agri-Pulse says Stabenow is being pressured by the Michigan Agri-business Association and others who support the Egg Bill, which is the result of an agreement between the Humane Society of the United States and United Egg Producers.
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