Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker Join Together on Bill To Ban Factory Farming
The Farm System Reform Act seeks to shut down America’s huge factory farms which have “broken” the food system and have “undue influence” over public policy.
Credit: Gage Skidmore
Senator Elizabeth Warren has publicly announced her support for Senator Cory Booker’s bill to phase out America’s factory farms by 2040.
The Farm System Reform Act looks to ban new large scale factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), whilst phasing out existing CAFOs by 2040.
Warren joins Rep. Ro Khanna who is also co-sponsoring the bill, which has introduced companion legislation to the House.
The bill also seeks to introduce more regulations for CAFOs, such as holding their corporations responsible for any environmental damage they cause, and prohibiting the Department of Agriculture from labelling imported meat as a “Product of USA”.
“For years, regulators looked the other way while giant multinational corporations crushed competition in the agriculture sector and seized control over key markets," Warren said in a statement seen by Newsweek. "The COVID-19 crisis will make it easier for Big Ag to get even bigger, gobble up smaller farms, and lead to fewer choices for consumers."
“We need to attack this consolidation head-on and give workers, farmers, and consumers bargaining power in our farm and food system," added Warren. “I'm glad to partner with Senator Booker and Representative Khanna to start reversing the hyper-concentration in our farm economy.”
Booker originally introduced the legislation back in 2019, but now the bill has taken on even more urgency and relevancy due to the current pandemic.
As Booker explains, "our food system was not broken by the pandemic and it was not broken by independent family farmers. It was broken by large, multinational corporations like Tyson, Smithfield, and JBS that, because of their buying power and size, have undue influence over the marketplace and over public policy."
"That undue influence was on full display with President Trump's recent executive order prioritizing meatpacker profits over the health and safety of workers," Booker added.
Amid industry leaders claiming that closures and sick workers were pushing the US meat supply “perilously close to the edge”, President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order essentially forcing meat-processing plants and slaughterhouses to remain open amid the pandemic. Critics described Trump’s executive order as “marching meatpacking workers off to their deaths” with safety concerns mounting for worker’s lives.
Species Unite
A collection of stories of those who fight the good fight on behalf of animals.