Diane Rosenberg is executive director of Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, where this commentary first appeared.

When U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley stopped at Jefferson County Park in June during his 99-county tour, it was the first time in a long while that he invited the general public to a meeting in this county.

Of course, I had to attend to ask him about CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) and the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression or EATS Act.

The EATS Act is Big Meat’s next move to gut California Proposition 12, and it’s currently embedded in the House version of the Farm Bill. (Grassley and Senator Joni Ernst were among its original Senate co-sponsors.) California voters approved Prop 12 in 2018 by a 63 percent to 37 percent margin. The measure requires any pork sold in that state to come from sows who were raised in a larger, more humane area where they can more freely move. It prohibits the sale of pork from sows caged in gestation crates or pork from their litters.

The EATS Act would negate Prop 12 by barring any state from enforcing or enacting a law governing livestock or pesticides that would be more stringent than any other state’s laws. The weakest laws in the country would become the national standard.

This is a terrible bill for many reasons, and JFAN is holding a webinar with Farm Action Fund President Joe Maxwell on Wednesday, August 7 at 7:00 pm CT to provide more information on the bill and how we can stop it.  

Since I could only attend for the first half of Grassley’s meeting, I arrived 30 minutes early to get a center front row seat. When the senator walked in, the room was packed. I tried for a full 25 minutes from that high visibility seat to get his attention. Five minutes before I had to leave, he finally saw me. This was my question:

I will preface my question with this statistic from a 2019 Johns Hopkins survey – 63 percent of Iowans support a factory farm moratorium.

You and Senator Ernst support the EATS Act which would nullify California Proposition 12. Many farmers have already made the costly adjustments to sell their pork according to Prop 12 guidelines and it provides a better financial opportunity for traditional, independent farmers to compete in the marketplace.

The EATS Act supports industrial livestock production, which mainly profits large multinational corporations. I have worked with people affected by neighboring CAFOs for 17 years now and I can tell you the loss of quality life, physical health, and property values are very real. And as you know, half of Iowa’s waterways are dirty and polluted, and for many reasons I don’t have time to get into, CAFOs are a public health threat.

With all that, I would like to know why you are a co-sponsor of the EATS Act which benefits multinational corporations when factory farming hurts so many of your constituents and so many of us sitting with you today.

Several in the audience appreciated the question. From the look on his face, Grassley did not.

This was his response in a nutshell:

• He implied that my concerns about the EATS Act were not consistent with protecting small producers.
• The bill avoids more pork industry concentration by providing an opportunity for smaller farmers to keep running their CAFOs.
• A lot of small producers can’t afford to spend the millions it would take to make the change. Large companies would therefore buy them out and get bigger and more concentrated.

He did not acknowledge the harms CAFOs cause.

Grassley’s response was not what I expected

I was not prepared for this response, and truthfully, I was unsatisfied with my reply. I expected Grassley to refer to the current industry talking point that Prop 12 is harming consumers by driving up California pork prices by 20 percent or more. I was prepared to cite a study making the rounds on Capitol Hill, which found farmers are only getting 5 percent of that increase—suggesting the industry is gouging consumers in order to lobby for the EATS Act.

I knew Grassley’s response was misleading, and I needed to understand how to better address that type of reasoning in the future. Fortunately, a Defeat EATS meeting was scheduled for the next day. Defeat EATS is a coalition of 120 organizations from around the country, including Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, working to stop this harmful legislation.

It was the perfect place to ask.

Joe Maxwell, who’s been lobbying for months with the Defeat EATS coalition and Farm Action Fund to stop the EATS Act, said he had never heard Grassley make that argument. In fact, at first he thought that came from an ill-informed staffer. Maxwell, who is also a hog farmer, helped me work through an effective rebuttal.

A good number of Iowa farmers are raising hogs for Niman Ranch, the Berkshire Cooperative, and other small niche labels as well, as farmers direct marketing to customers. Prop 12 gives them a great market opportunity they currently lack. Grassley ignored them.

Instead, he narrowly focused on small CAFO producers who may not have the capacity to convert. Maxwell said he didn’t think many of those farmers were even still in business. He didn’t know of any farmers being displaced, which would be adding further concentration to the market because of Prop 12.

The numbers don’t bear out Grassley’s reply

I looked further into this question. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources Animal Feeding Operation database lists eighteen small CAFOs with sow and litter operations in Iowa. Granted, there are more than that, because the DNR doesn’t track CAFOs with fewer than 1,250 hogs. But of the approximately 4,000 small CAFOs under that threshold, there are likely just a few with sow and litter operations.

Based on his experience, a long-time DNR animal feeding operation field officer I asked agreed with that assessment.

Digging deeper, most sow and litter CAFOs fall in the medium or large range, and of all the medium and large swine operations in Iowa, sow and litter confinements only account for 3 percent of Iowa CAFOs. Most swine factory farms are finishing operations where weaned piglets are raised to market weight.

If the proportions were comparative, there may be approximately 120 small sow and litter operations in Iowa—or less.

Traditional, independent farms contribute a lot to Iowa

Niman Ranch figures tell a different story. In 2019, there were 195 Iowa farmers producing pork for Niman according to a 2021 report by Iowa State University’s Dave Swenson: The Economic Contribution of Niman Ranch Hog Production in Iowa. That doesn’t include additional farmers raising for the Berkshire Cooperative, other niche labels, those selling through direct marketing, and newer farmers who joined Niman Ranch since 2019.

Not only do small scale, traditional independent farmers who benefit from Prop 12 outnumber CAFO operators, but Swenson’s report found Niman Ranch’s economic contribution to Iowa’s economy is significantly higher than CAFO operations. Niman produces 152 percent more jobs, 78 percent more labor income, 51 percent more value added dollars, and 75 percent more industrial output per 100,000 marketed hogs.

Who are you really protecting, Senator Grassley?

If Grassley’s concern for the small hog farmer were genuine, it would be directed at these independent, small-scale farmers, not CAFO operators.

It also appears Iowa CAFO owners may not even need Grassley’s concern. A July 14 Cedar Rapids Gazette article quoted Iowa Pork Producers Association President Matt Gent as saying,

“Initially, when California passed Prop 12 (in 2018), there was an effect in the market, because we didn’t really know how it was going to affect Iowa producers. Since then, over the past year, there’s been enough production change to meet Prop 12 demand that it really truly doesn’t affect a producer that doesn’t want to adjust operations to comply with the California law.”

If Grassley honestly cared about Iowa’s small hog farmers, he wouldn’t be a cosponsor of the EATS Act. In fact, between 2019 – 2024, Grassley received $549,143 in campaign donations from the agribusiness sector according to Open Secrets. This certainly appears to be Senator Grassley’s incentive to support this destructive bill.

The EATS Act benefits no one but Big Meat, the mega multinational corporations who control the pork industry. Those are the forces driving this legislation, including the foreign hog giants Smithfield (a Chinese company) and JBS in Brazil. The EATS Act would harm traditional, independent farmers who now have expanded access to the California Prop 12 market. It would strip away states’ rights and continue to damage rural communities by further enshrining factory farming.

The EATS Act is nothing but a temper tantrum by an industry that didn’t get its way when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Prop 12 in 2023. 

If I could relive that moment with Senator Grassley, that is everything I would say.

Learn more about the EATS Act during August 7 with Farm Action Fund President Joe Maxwell. Register here.

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Top photo of Senator Chuck Grassley is cropped from an image first published on his official Facebook page on June 4, 2024.