Iowa mulls torture bills while farm animals suffer

A pair of bills currently making their way through the Iowa Legislature would make first-offense animal torture a felony, rather than an aggravated misdemeanor. The legislation’s passage would be good news for animals considered companions, such as dogs and cats. Yet, it ignores the egregious suffering of millions of animals every day on Iowa’s factory farms.

Iowa is one of the nation’s leaders in animal agriculture, and the top producer of pork, eggs, and red meat. The industry’s presence in the Midwestern state is so massive that the almost 124 million animals farmed in Iowa each year outnumber, by far, the state’s human population of about 3.2 million people. As Forbes reported in 2024, “If you eat pork in the U.S., there’s a decent chance that it came from Iowa,” where over 30% of the country’s pigs are raised.

It’s not just the number of farms in Iowa, which has actually decreased as the industry has consolidated. It’s the dominance of large industrial farms that’s causing immense animal suffering.

Iowa is home to the nation’s largest concentration of factory farms, with over 4,000 of them. About 73% of the state’s pigs are kept in facilities with 5,000 or more animals, and one egg farm may house millions of hens.

Factory farming, which runs on raising and killing animals quickly and cheaply, means that animals are suffering inside crowded facilities and facing brutal practices that, if inflicted upon a dog or cat, would be criminal.

The Senate and House bills state, “A person is guilty of animal torture if the person intentionally or knowingly crushes, burns, drowns, suffocates, impales, or otherwise subjects an animal to serious injury or death or causes, directs, or provides anything of value to another person to do the same.”

Many farmed birds are boiled alive, even fully conscious, when they are dunked, shackled upside down by their legs, into a tank of scalding hot water. Despite attempts to stun them, other animals, like pigs and cows, may be conscious when their throats are cut, and they slowly bleed out.

On egg farms, where male birds are unprofitable, millions are dropped, newly hatched, into a macerator to be ground alive or into a crowded plastic bag to suffocate.

Mutilation is part of standard industry practices—including burning or cutting off part of birds’ beaks and toes, searing the horns off calves, and castrating piglets, all without anesthesia or painkillers.

Not only should committing these acts be considered animal torture, but if Iowa’s legislation includes those who pay someone else to do it for them, then the owners and multibillion-dollar corporations behind Iowa’s factory farms should be held accountable for the suffering they’re causing.

Gene Baur is president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, the world’s premier farm animal sanctuary and advocacy organization, and author of the books “Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food” and “Living the Farm Sanctuary Life.”