Senator Booker's New Bill to Hold Big Meat Accountable, Explained

Announced in late November, 2022, Senator Booker's bold legislation would hold corporations and factory farms accountable for curbing some of the most egregious forms of abuse during animal slaughter, as well as for mitigating disasters and providing funds for disaster responses. In other words, the Industrial Agricultural Accountability Act aims to intervene against the cruelty that's become "business as usual" in animal agriculture, not just in the daily standard operating procedures of farms and slaughterhouses, but also when disaster strikes. 

Mass animal suffering in US farms and slaughterhouses

Since the 1960s, the business of animal farming has boomed. In the United States alone, Big Meat kills almost 10 billion land animals for food every single year. According to the US Department of Agriculture's tallies, that meant 9.3 billion chickens, 215 million turkeys, 128.9 million pigs, 33.8 million cows, 2.2 million sheep and lambs, and 391,000 calves in 2021 alone. This is animal slaughter on a massive scale. And, unsurprisingly, the magnitude of suffering runs parallel to the magnitude of slaughter.

Senator Booker's Industrial Agricultural Accountability Act would endeavor to curb some of the cruelest practices in animal slaughter today.

The slaughter of chickens and turkeys

Chickens and turkeys raised meat are the most widely farmed land animals in the country—and because their welfare isn't protected by law, they endure the worst forms of abuse imaginable. Factory farms selectively breed birds to grow so large and so fast that they can barely support their own weight. "Broiler chickens"—the industry term for chickens raised for meat—face a host of diseases and injuries due to their explosive growth rate, from heart attacks to ammonia burns to white striping disease. Some chickens are so heavy that they can't even stand up, let alone reach their food and water, leaving them trapped on a filthy, reeking, dimly lit floor, lying in their own waste. Many birds die before even making it to the slaughterhouse.

A young broiler chicken sits on the waste-sodden floor of a factory farm.

After four to six weeks of suffering, a chicken's artificially short life comes to an end at the slaughterhouse. Once the birds arrive in truckloads of crates, they're dumped into a funnel that spits them out onto an extremely fast-moving conveyor belt. Workers shackle the birds upside-down by their ankles while fully conscious, often breaking the frightened birds' legs in the process. The birds proceed through an electrified water bath meant to render them unconscious, and then through the "kill machine" that severs their necks by blade. But too many birds manage to avoid both steps—the stunner and the knife—and proceed to the scalding tank that'll loosen their feathers, completely alive, alert, and terrified.

The Industrial Agricultural Accountability Act introduced by Senator Booker would ensure that chickens are covered under the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act—the 1958 law that oversees the welfare of animals at slaughter—which currently only offers protections to cows, calves, horses, mules, sheep, and pigs. Within ten years of Senator Booker's legislation being enacted, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act would need to cease its exemption of chickens, the most widely farmed land animal in the world. With the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act covering the welfare of chickens, poultry slaughterhouses would need to phase out the practice of live-shackle slaughter and take more thorough measures to ensure the birds are fully unconscious before they go to slaughter, sparing them from the torture of being boiled alive.

Senator Booker's Industrial Agricultural Accountability Act would also bring an end to the dangerously high processing speeds at slaughterhouses. Currently, conveyor belts at slaughterhouses process up to 175 birds a minute, which poses real threats to the safety of both birds and workers. According to the US Department of Labor's Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), which monitors worker safety in the poultry processing industry, poultry slaughterhouses expose workers to "many serious hazards." The Industrial Agricultural Accountability Act would end line-speed increases and thereby reduce some of the dangers of processing birds. AFGE, which represents more than 6,500 federal food inspectors nationwide, has been outspoken against dangerous line speeds and the slaughterhouses' self-inspection programs, and it endorses Senator Booker's proposed legislation.

The slaughter of cows

Cows are sensitive, emotional animals who form deep, lasting bonds with one another. Yet on factory farms where they'll be raised for meat, they endure dehorning, branding, and castration without pain relief, as well as the monotony and cruelty of cramped, barren feedlots, where they can't graze. At slaughter, they're often stunned by captive bolt—though to varying degrees of success. From there, they're hoisted mid-air and hung upside-down by their legs, when they're cut and left to bleed out before being skinned and eviscerated. Sadly, slaughterhouse workers and inspectors have reported seeing animals endure their own slaughter while still conscious.

With Senator Booker's Industrial Agricultural Accountability Act, any cows who can't walk from the transport truck to the slaughterhouse—known as "downed" cows—would need to be euthanized rather than, as is commonly the case, forcibly dragged to slaughter.

The slaughter of pigs

Despite their remarkable intelligence, pigs also face extreme cruelty en masse on factory farms and at slaughterhouses. Pig farmers keep pregnant pigs—known as breeding sows—in gestation crates that are barely bigger than their own bodies, making it impossible for the animals to turn around. A sow will spend the full duration of her four-month pregnancy alone in a seven- by two-foot cage with metal bars and slatted floors to collect her waste into a noxious lagoon of pink slurry. When they ultimately go to slaughter, they're subjected to a brutal round of carbon dioxide that burns their lungs. Then, they're slashed across the throat and left to bleed out. 

Senator Booker’s Industrial Agricultural Accountability Act would ensure that animals receive adequate water, protection, space, and the appropriate warmth or cooling during transport from the farm to the slaughterhouse, as long as the farm is a ‘‘covered industrial operator,’’ an individual or entity that owns or controls, at a single point in time, not less than 2,500 pigs; 30,000 turkeys or ducks; or 82,000 laying hens or broilers. Additionally, as with cows, the Industrial Agricultural Accountability Act would protect “downed” pigs from being slaughtered for food.

An aerial photograph of a North Carolina CAFO shows massive lagoons of animal waste.

Factory farming as a public health threat

Factory farming doesn't just harm animals. It also poses a dire threat to public health—by polluting our air and water and, with its overcrowded sheds and feedlots, creating conditions ripe for viral pandemics and zoonotic diseases. According to a 2021 report from the Harvard School of Public Health, "spillover" of pathogens from factory farms to human communities is a reality—and one that must be taken seriously. The Harvard researchers recommend establishing an "intergovernmental partnership to address spillover risk from wild animals to livestock and people," because factory farms "can serve as reservoirs for potential zoonotic pathogens." This is especially the case in intensive animal agriculture, because "farm animals are often reared in dense populations with low genetic diversity and in close contact with humans"—which creates extremely favorable conditions for the transmission of viruses. 

Packing animals into close confinement on concentrated animal feeding lots (CAFOs) is an industry norm. And the risks to animals and humans aren't just hypothetical. Disasters are already unfolding. In 2022, avian influenza—or bird flu—emerged across farms in the US. By mid-summer, more than 40 million birds had already been affected in the US alone. And to stop the spread of the disease, farmers resorted to an extremely cruel form of mass slaughter called ventilation shutdown plus (VSD+), a method of killing that subjects thousands of birds at a time—including healthy ones—to extremely high heat and carbon dioxide, causing suffocation, heat stroke, and organ failure.

When disasters like extreme weather or bird flu strike, Senator Booker’s proposed legislation would restrict the meat industry’s ability to deploy inhumane methods of depopulation like VSD+. Moreover, taxpayers wouldn’t pay for these mass killings as they currently do. Instead, the bill would establish a new USDA office, the “Office of High-Risk AFO Disaster Mitigation and Enforcement,” that would collect funds from meat producers on an annual basis—and this new fund, the "High-Risk Disaster AFO Mitigation and Enforcement Fund,” would help cover the cost of disasters. In addition to paying these fees, producers would also need to submit a disaster mitigation plan to ensure animals have necessary resources in the event of a disaster, and to ensure that any mass killing is carried out "in ways that most rapidly render animals unconscious in the event that depopulation is unavoidable."

Senator Cory Booker takes on factory farming

Senator Booker is no stranger to the horrors of industrial animal agriculture. He's taken action on behalf of meat and poultry processing workers, who "often face exploitative and dangerous work conditions." 

He's also advocated against acquisitions and mergers in the food and agriculture sector. "Increased market concentration in the food and agricultural industry has led to disastrous consequences for family farmers and ranchers, food workers, food quality and safety, and communities," said Senator Booker. "In the past four decades, we have seen the top four firms in nearly every sector of the food and agriculture economy acquire outsized market power. Using this power as leverage, these firms have exercised undue influence over federal agriculture policies, driven family farmers and ranchers out of business, and increased food prices to pad their profits while consumers pay more at checkout lines." 

In 2019, Senator Booker unveiled the Farm System Reform Act, a bill that would crack down on monopolies within the meat industry and place a moratorium on industrialized factory farms. "Large factory farms are harmful to rural communities, public health, and the environment," Senator Booker said, "and we must immediately begin to transition to a more sustainable and humane system."

And, in the face of ongoing threats to Proposition 12, widely considered the strongest animal protection law in the world, Senator Booker expressed disappointment at President Biden's support for the legal challenges against the law. "I am deeply disappointed and angered," he said, "that USDA and the Biden Administration have aligned themselves with corporate meatpackers and their cruel factory farm system that is dangerous for workers, consumers, animals, and the environment."

By introducing the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act, Senator Booker is building on his past advocacy for farmed animals—as well as on his record of calling out Big Meat. "We've seen multiple recent crises that have shined a light on the threat that corporate meat producers and their web of factory farms represent to workers, animals, the environment, and rural communities. Built by agribusinesses, the industrial livestock and poultry system is designed to maximize production—while externalizing risk and liability—to ensure corporate profits even when the system fails," said Senator Booker. "The Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act would place the liability for disasters where it belongs—on the corporations and industrial operators who profit the most from factory farming and ensure farmed animals are not subjugated to cruel and inhumane practices."

The Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act, explained

Senator Booker's Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act would ultimately seek to place the liability for the harms of factory farms on the corporations that operate them, while also ensuring that more money is available to small, family farms rather than industrial, corporate operations. It would:

• Require industrial factory farm operators to register high-risk AFOs, develop and submit disaster preparedness plans, and cover the costs of preparing for and responding to disaster events like avian flu or extreme weather

• Establish a new office within the USDA, the "Office of High-Risk AFO Disaster Mitigation and Enforcement," to enforce and oversee disaster mitigation, depopulation requirements, registration of high-risk AFOs, the disaster mitigation and enforcement fund and annual fees, covered industrial operator responsibilities and liabilities, and depopulation reports.

• Ensure more funding for Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors, and prohibit self-inspection systems

• Restrict high-risk AFOs from using extremely inhumane methods of depopulation, such as VSD+; require them to include, in their submitted disaster mitigation plan, a plan to carry out depopulation in ways that "most rapidly render animals unconscious in the event depopulation is unavoidable"; and punish any of these AFOs if, after a year of this Act's enactment, any of the restricted practices (VSD, VSD+, and water-based foaming) are used for depopulation on a high-risk AFO, by stipulating that they will not be eligible for any federal contract for 10 years, will not be eligible for inspection of any facility owned by the CIO pursuant to the FMIA or PPIA for 10 years, and could receive a penalty of up to $1,000 per animal

• Create a grant program to help slaughterhouses transition away from live-shackle slaughter to controlled-atmosphere stunning

• Establish a five-year pilot program within the Meat and Poultry Inspection Division of the FSIS to expand the availability of processing inspectors, technical assistance, and onsite inspection for eligible facilities, including no-cost overtime inspections, as well as to identify and train part-time inspectors and technical assistance providers

• Establish protections for farm workers, contract farmers, and slaughterhouse workers, including health care benefits and severance if terminated due to disaster 

• Establish whistleblower protections to prevent termination and discrimination from covered workers and contract growers who testify, plan to testify, previously testified, initiate proceedings, and file or plan to file a complaint relating to labor standards set forth in this Act

• Eliminate increases to already-dangerous, high-speed slaughter speeds

• Prohibit the use of prison labor to manage disaster events

• Expand the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act's definition of livestock to include chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese (poultry)

• Protect animals during transport from the farm to the slaughterhouse by limiting the total hours of transport without unloading animals to eight hours; providing adequate bedding that ensures comfort and prevents slipping, as well as absorption of urine and feces, and protection from the elements; requiring a sufficient method of water supply in-transit; giving enough space during transportation to allow each animal to lie down, turn around, and fully extend their limbs; and prohibiting the transportation of animals if the weather is, or will be, below 40 degrees Fahrenheit or above 86 degrees Fahrenheit---though exceptions may apply depending on unavoidable circumstances

• Establish a program to provide grants to eligible research institutions to study higher-welfare transportation methods for live-animal transport

• Prohibit the buying and selling of non-ambulatory---"downed"---animals

• Prohibit the processing, butchering, or sale of meat products from a nonambulatory animal

The bill could close loopholes in America's broken slaughter rules for animals and workers

Senator Booker's bill highlights areas urgently in need of reform in the factory farming industry. His Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act explicitly seeks to protect some of the most vulnerable animals in our food system—chickens—as well as animals who face extreme cruelty in transit to, and during, slaughter. On top of keeping an eye out for animals, the proposed legislation aims to protect both farm workers and slaughterhouse workers, who face dangerous working conditions on the job. And ultimately, Senator Booker's bill works to hold Big Meat accountable for the costs of factory farming.

A coalition of more than 50 animal welfare, public health, labor, environmental, and faith-based organizations have endorsed this bill, including The Humane League. 

Mercy for Animals and the ASPCA partnered with Senator Booker on the bill, which stands to amend the 2023 Farm Bill. According to Leah Garcés, president and CEO of Mercy For Animals: "Since its inception almost 100 years ago, the Farm Bill has become a tool that the industrial animal agriculture industry uses to do little else than maximize its profit---to the detriment of consumers, the environment, food system workers, farmers, and farmed animals. As a result, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment in US food system reform: The meat industry has created deep-seated problems that exploit and harm the most vulnerable. It must be the industry's responsibility to solve these problems. The IAA recognizes this responsibility and affords the industry an opportunity to begin to right these wrongs."