We like bacon, but not corporate agriculture

In a recent Facebook post Rep. Ashley Hinson spoke of her bill, EATS (Exposing Agricultural Trade Suppression_ Act, alleviating what she calls “unconstitutional regulation.”

California has passed a law banning the sale of pork born to sows spending their pregnancies in small crates unable to stand up, lie down, turn, or stretch. Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Walmart and 50 plus other companies agree. She claims it’s an attack on “anyone that likes bacon for breakfast, “ calling it radical and ridiculous.

She ignores that Iowans themselves are trying to clean up the pork industry run mostly by large corporations, not family farmers. The hogs are cruelly kept in Concentrated Animal Feed Operations, inches apart and smelled by neighbors miles away. Manure is allowed to be spread on fields and in the winter on top of snow melting into rivers, streams, and our below ground water supply.

Hinson loves the word radical so I’ll turn it on her. Her bill is a radical effort to ignore the great harm done to Iowa’s environment in order to put bacon on her table. If she refuses to help clean up the Iowa pork industry, I applaud California’s refusing to be a part of the mess.

Shari Flatt

Dubuque