"Farm bill would kill California's pigpen law," reports Alexi Koseff, SF Chronicle staff writer in today's paper (May 2, 2026).  Thank goodness the Senate will have the chance to check the zeal of the House of Representatives when this bill reaches it because it would invalidate a state law (Prop 12)  approved by millions of us California voters in 2018.  Even the Supreme Court ruled (narrowly) that our state had the right to pass this bill.  It's not that this new standard is wonderful for the pigs.  It's not.  But at least it gives them room to turn around.  Most pork is produced outside of California (Iowa, for example), where sows are kept in 2-foot-by-7-foot "gestation crates" barely larger than their bodies.  (See photo.)   

Now more than a quarter of American hog farmers have already made investments to comply with California's regulations.  

Can we go forward instead of going backwards?  Rep. Lateefah Simon, the Oakland Democrat who helped organize a bipartisan defense of Prop 12 in the House, is right when she calls the conditions most animals live in (What a life) "cruel."  

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/farm-bill-california-prop-12-22234263.php

 
Good people work hard to plan and carry out the Asian Coalition dinner every year, but the menu stays pretty centered on dead animals, and last night, that's what they kept bringing on.  Since my volunteer work for animal welfare and the environment is to eat plant-based with every bite, I had to wait around--as did another person, who's a vegetarian, for quite a while before they brought anything that wasn't a dead animal of some sort.  The problem could have been easily avoided if they'd simply begun by serving something that everybody at every table could eat, something plant-based.  Then we could have all begun dinner together and those who wanted to eat dead animals could still get their fill.