The Save Our Bacon Act, or SOB Act, fails to advance
WASHINGTON D.C.––The much anticipated August 6, 2026 “Showdown at the Not Okay Corral” might as well have been fought with bean shooters––SNAP bean shooters––for all that the outcome meant toward passing a 2026 Farm Bill.
The 2026 Farm Bill failed by an 11-10 vote to clear the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry. It now may not pass at all.
But several provisional wins for animals resulted from the snapping and air-biting standoff between Republican and Democratic committee members over how to fund and restructure the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP for short.
Iowa coverage fails to mention pigs
“Farm groups expressed disappointment in another delay to the farm bill,” structuring and allocating funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “which has not been reauthorized since 2018,” reported Cami Koons for the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
“Other groups celebrated that policies like the Save Our Bacon Act, which would block individual state rules on the growing conditions of agricultural products, were not advanced.”
“Agricultural products,” to be clear, means pigs.
“Individual state rules” means the California Proposition 12 and Massachusetts Question 3 requirements that pigs not be raised in immobilizing confinement, adopted by voters in 2018 and 2016, respectively, with the further proviso that pork sold in either state must come from pigs raised in compliance with the California and Massachusetts standards.
Air-biting & snapping
Air-biting and snapping over the Save Our Bacon Act, or SOB Act, amendments to the 2026 Farm Bill were particularly sharp in Iowa, which accounts for nearly 40% of U.S. pig production.
Iowa state representative Josh Turek, a Democrat, opposes the Save Our Bacon Act.
Turek has been nominated to run against Republican Ashley Hinson, currently an Iowa member of the House of Representatives, in the November 2026 race for an open Iowa U.S. Senate seat.
“Iowa farmers,” Hinson alleged in social media postings after the 2026 Farm Bill, “are outraged over his support for Proposition 12 and against my Save Our Bacon Act included in the Farm Bill.”
About 10% of all Iowans work in jobs associated with pork production––but 90% do not.
“Farm Bill skidded off the tracks”
“Last night the Farm bill skidded off the tracks,” emailed Animal Wellness Action & Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle to ANIMALS 24-7 soon after the August 6, 2026 “Showdown at the Not Okay Corral” ended.
“We got word that the Democrats were going to close ranks and defeat the bill,” Pacelle said.
Arkansas Senator John Boozman, chairing the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry, “decided to charge ahead,” Pacelle explained, but “today’s mark-up was just for show. It wasn’t a serious exercise in policy making, but theater.”
“We’re not going to get a farm bill. That’s the game here today,” affirmed Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, according to Progressive Farmer agricultural policy editor Jake Zajkowski. “All of us knew before we walked into the room. This is going to fall to a partisan vote over SNAP payments.”
Pork barrel politics stall
“The Senate Farm bill stalled out in the Agriculture Committee,” Pacelle wrote to Animal Wellness Action & Center for a Humane Economy membership, “with the factory farming lobby again coming up short in its efforts to gut America’s strongest farm animal protection laws.
“Some GOP senators, bowing to Smithfield Foods,” the Chinese-owned pork production company leading support for the SOB Act, “were determined to use the Farm bill as a legislative vehicle to overturn Prop 12 in California and Question 3 in Massachusetts,” Pacelle recounted.
“After today’s proceeding, those pro-animal laws seem as secure as ever. Democrats on the Agriculture Committee, led by Senators Cory Booker, Adam Schiff of California, and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, stood firm against repealing Prop 12, with all eight of their Democratic colleagues alongside them.
“Kansas Republican Senator Roger Marshall joined us as well. Once Senator Marshall came to understand that China’s Smithfield Foods was trying to secure control of even more U.S. pig production and to bring its high-rise factory farms to the American heartland, he decided he didn’t want this serving of legislative bacon on the menu,” Pacelle said.
Funding for mink coat promo
Pacelle also celebrated that the apparent failure of the 2026 Farm Bill appears to have killed “a provision inserted by Arkansas Republican John Boozman, chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, [which] would repeal the federal law barring tax dollars from promoting mink coat sales at foreign fashion shows. The provision would only serve as a handout to a declining, inhumane, and virally dangerous industry,” Pacelle suggested.
But Pacelle expressed disappointment over some of the other fallout from the probable failure of the 2026 Farm Bill.
FIGHT Act
“Senator Booker,” Pacelle said, “had a winning amendment, backed by every Democrat plus Senator Marshall and other GOP lawmakers, to enhance enforcement against dogfighting and cockfighting — including trafficking of fighting animals to 30 other nations,” by incorporating into the 2026 Farm Bill the Fighting Inhumane Gambling & High-Risk Trafficking Act, or FIGHT Act.
“Our coalition of nearly 1,200 agencies and organizations, including all of American law enforcement, now turns to the stand-alone bill introduced by Senators Booker and John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana.”
The stand-alone bill, S. 1454, has 21 Senate co-sponsors, including eight Republicans and 13 Democrats.
Horses & greyhounds
“Senator Ben Ray Luján,” a Democrat from New Mexico., “filed an amendment to codify restrictions on horse slaughter, including transport to Mexico and Canada,” Pacelle continued.
“With the USDA temporarily halting shipments of horses to Mexico over New World screwworm,” an odd measure in view that the risk from screwworm comes from half a million cattle per year coming north from Mexico, not the 20,000 horses sold south, “we are asking President Trump to make that limit permanent.
“Senator Schiff filed an amendment,” Pacelle added, “at our urging with our friends at GREY2K USA, to end gambling on greyhound racing, either live or simulcast performances. We had the votes to win,” Pacelle said, “and it doesn’t hurt that 44 states already ban this archaic spectator sport that hurts dogs. The enactment of a national Greyhound Protection Act has momentum.”
“Had bum wheels & spun off the track”
Concluded Pacelle to ANIMALS 24-7, “It may now be too late for a Farm Bill in the 119th Congress,” concluding after the November 2026 national election.
“We will have other chances,” Pacelle hoped, “but this was the train that should have left the station and gotten to a destination. But it had bum wheels and spun off the track. So we need to put FIGHT and the other policies in a car on a working train.”
The FIGHT Act, meanwhile, may get a last-minute boost from a breaking case in Maui, Hawaii, underscoring the multiple arguments for passage.
(Maui Police Department photo)
Hawaii bust spotlights cockfighting & corruption
Maui police lieutenant Michael Vaituulala, “who has been with the department for nearly 20 years,” reported Madeleine Valera for Civil Beat, “accepted regular cash payments from cockfight organizers and, in exchange, ensured officers would not conduct enforcement on certain chicken fights, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.”
Vaituulala “was placed on administrative leave from his post as commander of the Maui Police Department Criminal Intelligence Unit,” wrote Valera. “Vaituulala is being held in the Honolulu Federal Detention Center,” Valera added.
Affirmed U.S. Attorney Attorney Ken Sorenson via an August 6, 2026 Department of Justice media release, “According to the criminal complaint, Vaituulala and others met with organizers of chicken fights to discuss logistics and conditions for holding the fights, with Vaituulala providing his approval for the organizers to open a chicken fighting location and the days on which fights could take place.
Shared confidential information
“Vaituulala also protected individuals engaged in drug trafficking and improperly shared confidential law enforcement information with them in exchange for cash payments,” the Department of Justice media release alleged.
“The information he shared included the identities of confidential sources, evidence photos, the existence of a sealed federal wiretap, the existence of a sealed arrest warrant, and details regarding the subjects and targets of ongoing federal investigations.
“The FBI is investigating the case with assistance from the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Criminal Investigation Division,” the Department of Justice media release finished.
2026 Farm Bill may yet be revived
Senator Amy Klobuchar, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, insisted to media after the 2026 Farm Bill failure that she is “committed to continuing to work with Chairman Boozman on this bill to get it done.”
But getting it done may not be a SNAP, while passing a stand-alone FIGHT Act still has a fighting chance.
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