The Kirkpatrick Policy Group is panning an Oklahoma effort to overturn a Massachusetts animal welfare law.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond signed an amicus brief with a dozen other states in late October. The law bans Massachusetts farmers from putting breeding pigs, egg-laying hens and veal calves in spaces where they can’t stand up, turn around, lie down or fully extend their limbs. It also bans the sale of products coming from animals confined in that way.
“This ban will significantly hurt pork producers in Oklahoma and across the nation,” Drummond said in a statement.
The rebuttal lays out reasons the policy group disagrees with the legal action, including a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a similar California Law. Brendan Hoover, a spokesperson for the Kirkpatrick Policy Group, said there is a large pork market outside of California and Massachusetts.
Hoover said one of the policy group’s initiatives is ending the use of gestation crates but not to end eating pork. Louisa McCune, a board member of the group, said in the rebuttal about 95.4% of hogs in Oklahoma live on 33 industrial farms.
“Laws in other states won’t hurt Oklahoma’s pork industry nearly as much as lack of competition at home,” McCune said. “Imprisoning pregnant sow pigs in cages scarcely larger than their own bodies doesn’t help Oklahoma pig farmers.”
The group supports two bills in the Oklahoma legislature, House Bill 2438 and Senate Bill 66, that would create grant programs through the Oklahoma Department of Commerce for farmers to renovate pig housing facilities. The bills were introduced this spring, but did not pass the state House Committee on Agriculture or the Senate Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee.
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