Report

Farm Animal Treatment in the United States: What Role Is There for Additional Federal Regulations?

By Daniel A. Sumner

American Enterprise Institute

March 06, 2023

Key Points

  • The federal government mostly leaves policy about the housing and treatment of farm animals to the states, but there is increasing interest in a more active federal role, perhaps through the next farm bill.
  • Many states regulate in-state farm animal housing and treatment, and some regulate interstate marketing of animal products based on farm animal treatment elsewhere.
  • One argument for federal legislation is to preempt state-by-state rules to help assure national consistency. Another is to impose federal regulations that would raise standards in laggard jurisdictions and perhaps set more restrictive regulations for animal agriculture generally.
  • This report argues for more recognition of buyers’ willingness to pay to satisfy their individual preferences, more transparency about public policy goals, and better clarity about the nature of the public good related to on-farm treatment of farm animals.

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Introduction

Animal agriculture worldwide is experiencing strong demand as global markets grow, with more potential consumers reaching incomes that support regular consumption of animal products.1 At the same time, in recent decades, with consolidation and application of improved genetics and feeding practices, costs of production have declined in inflation-adjusted terms. In response to growing global demand, US animal product exports have increased and, after some cattle-cycle adjustments, are projected to continue moderate growth, especially for dairy products, pork, and poultry.2

However, the public and policy atmosphere surrounding animal agriculture is anything but positive. Several claims underlie a litany of bad press. First, consuming animal products uses more resources than if people would simply eat the grains and oilseeds that are fed to livestock.

Second, bovines emit methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and manure handling often contributes additional methane to the atmosphere. Moreover, livestock feed production also entails greenhouse emissions, so the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions attributed to livestock product consumption far exceed such emissions from direct consumption of most crops.

Third, although the health indictments of animal product consumption have moderated with better nutrition information, many people in North America and other places are thought to overconsume animal-based fats. These and other concerns have led to a conventional wisdom that the future of animal agriculture is limited at best.3 Social and ethical distress about farm animal treatment adds one more concern to the mix.

My focus in this report is the potential for US federal policy to regulate the treatment of animals on farms, including, especially, farm animal housing rules that have been the subject of much controversy when implemented by state jurisdictions. Although farm animal treatment was not included in the 2018 Farm Bill (i.e., the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018), there is interest in doing more in the next farm bill.

For example, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) has targeted the 2023 Farm Bill as “our chance to make real meaningful change.”4 The ASPCA farm bill discussion lists Senate Agriculture Committee member Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), and House Agriculture Committee member Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) as reintroducing proposals that would require dramatic changes in animal farm practices in the United States.5 These members of Congress have also expressed aversion toward confined animal feeding operations and large vertically integrated livestock farms in general.

Administered by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), as amended in periodic farm bills, including the 2018 Farm Bill, the Animal Welfare Act applies to pets, animals for exhibiting, and research lab animals, but it explicitly does not regulate farm animals.6 The USDA does administer extensive regulations on humane treatment of farm animals, but those apply only after they have left the farm and are being readied for slaughter.

The Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), which inspects slaughter plants primarily to assure that animal products are safe for human consumption, also has a responsibility to ensure “humane animal handling” under the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.7 These regulations, along with accompanying food safety and labeling regulations, are enforced at slaughter plants. They do not apply to animals at farms before transport to federally inspected processing facilities. This report devotes no further attention to policies governing animal treatment regulations and enforcement by APHIS or FSIS.

Farm animal treatment is often discussed under the rubric of “animal welfare.” It is a term I avoid because applicable regulations, although sometimes called “animal welfare policies,” actually deal with observable treatment of animals and farm practices that affect animals, especially their housing.

Further, the welfare consequences for the animals of alternative treatments or farm practice regulations are often complicated factually and inherently complex intellectually. It is often not straightforward to establish conclusively which of several farm practices improve the well-being of farm animals. As a consequence, claims about welfare-enhancing practices are controversial. In addition, parties in the public policy debate include animal industry organizations and groups whose objective is to eliminate animal agriculture and consumption of animal products, not simply improve the treatment of livestock.

Of course, much of the economics literature and broad public discussion have adopted the term “animal welfare,” as will I, especially in comments on the literature’s use of the term.8

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Notes

  1. For a recent overview in the context of sustainability, see Martin C. Parlasca and Matin Qaim, “Meat Consumption and Sustainability,” Annual Review of Resource Economics 14, no. 1 (2022): 17–41, https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-resource-111820-032340.
  2. Interagency Agricultural Projections Committee, USDA Agricultural Projections to 2032, US Department of Agriculture, Office of the Chief Economist, February 2023, https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/105853/oce-2023-01.pdf.
  3. For an economic approach to many “sustainability” meat issues in a global context, see Parlasca and Qaim, “Meat Consumption and Sustainability.” For a distinctly noneconomic perspective on broad global diet questions, the EAT-Lancet Commission laid out many claims in summary form, with reference to an extensive literature. See Walter Willett, “Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems,” Lancet 393, no. 10170 (February 2019): 447–92, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31788-4/fulltext.
  4. American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, “Farm Bill 2023 Is Here: Our Chance to Make Real, Meaningful Change,” February 2, 2023, https://www.aspca.org/news/farm-bill-2023-here-our-chance-make-real-meaningful-change.
  5. Proposed legislation that would likely be linked to the 2023 Farm Bill includes Farm System Reform Act of 2021, S. 2332, 117th Cong., 1st sess., July 13, 2021, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2332; and Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act of 2022, S. 5138, 117th Cong., 2nd sess., November 29, 2022, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/5138?s=1&r=6.
  6. G. K. Croft, “Legislative History of the Animal Welfare Act: In Brief,” Congressional Research Service, July 14, 2022, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R47180.pdf.
  7. For specifics of the Food Safety Inspection Service implementation of inspections and applications of its legal authority, see US Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service, “Humane Handling,” https://www.fsis.usda.gov/inspection/ compliance-guidance/humane-handling.
  8. Lusk Jason and F. Bailey Norwood, “Animal Welfare Economics,” Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy 33 (2011): 463–83; and Parlasca and Qaim, “Meat Consumption and Sustainability.”