Valley Times | Opinion: Oppose cruel, cynical EATS Act in Congress

Reposted from: https://www.valleytimes.news/opinion/guest_opinion/opinion-oppose-cruel-cynical-eats-act-in-congress/article_6376268a-4cd9-11ee-8667-3b2c36f0cb14.html

September 11, 2023

I urge my fellow Oregonians and animal lovers to speak out in opposition to the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act (H.R. 4417/S. 2019), a cruel and alarming bill that threatens decades of progress in animal welfare.

The bill is a shameless attempt to insulate America’s destructive and highly consolidated industrialized animal agriculture system from widely supported and commonsense regulations.

In a recent New York Times article, opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof pointedly proposes the bill be renamed the “Animal Abuse Act.”

If enacted, the EATS Act could strip state and local governments of their ability to pass laws and regulations related to the production or sale of “agricultural products” within their jurisdictions, including those related to the treatment of animals in factory farms.

The bill could erase hundreds of existing animal-friendly laws and render states powerless to create new laws or regulations to protect animals moving forward.

The EATS Act only stands to further line the already-deep pockets of industrial animal agriculture corporations at the expense of animals, farmers and the American public. I thank my lawmakers, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici and Sens. Jeffrey Merkley and Ronald Wyden, for opposing the EATS Act.