Hinson Introduces Bill to Save Family Farms, Protect Pork Producers from Patchwork Regulations

U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, has introduced the Save Our Bacon Act to help aid family farms across the country by providing certainty against a dangerous and chaotic web of conflicting farm regulations, including California Proposition 12.

California and Massachusetts have proposed arbitrary mandates on production practices for farmers in other states. Hinson says the Save Our Bacon Act would alleviate this overregulation by prohibiting state and local governments from interfering with the production of livestock in other states.

“The Save Our Bacon Act reaffirms livestock producers’ right to sell their products across state lines, without interference from arbitrary mandates,” Hinson says. “This legislation will stop out-of-touch activists — who don’t know the first thing about farming — from dictating how Iowa farmers do their job.”

National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) President Duane Stateler, a pork producer from McComb, Ohio, has expressed producers’ support of the bill.

“We sincerely appreciate Representative Hinson for consistently engaging with family farmers and championing legislation that provides the certainty we need to pass along our farms to the next generation,” he says. “Without legislation to shield America’s 60,000-plus pork-producing family farms from heavy-handed, multi-state regulations, many producers otherwise would be faced with business-crushing decisions.”

Stateler notes that bipartisan support for “averting a web of contradictory state laws” is growing, with support from President Donald Trump, former President Joe Biden and their respective agriculture secretaries, Brooke Rollins and Tom Vilsack.