Order Code RS21978
Updated August 28, 2008
Humane Treatment of Farm Animals:
Overview and Issues
Geoffrey S. Becker
Specialist in Agricultural Policy
Resources, Science, and Industry Division
Summary
Animal protection activists in the United States have long sought legislation to
modify or curtail some practices considered by U.S. agriculture to be acceptable or
necessary to animal health. Members of Congress over the years have offered various
bills that would affect animal care on the farm, during transport, or at slaughter; in the
110th Congress these include H.R. 503, H.R. 661, H.R. 1726, H.R. 6202, H.R. 6278,
H.R. 6598, S. 311, S. 394, and S. 2770. Members of the House and Senate Agriculture
Committees generally have expressed a preference for voluntary rather than regulatory
approaches to humane care.
Background
USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is responsible for
enforcing the Animal Welfare Act (AWA; 7 U.S.C. 2131 et seq.), which requires
minimum standards of care for certain warm-blooded animals bred for commercial sale,
used in research, transported commercially, or exhibited to the public. However, the act
excludes farm animals raised for food and fiber from coverage.
The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (7 U.S.C. 1901 et seq.), enforced by USDA’s
Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), governs the humane slaughter and handling
of livestock (but not poultry) at packing plants. Also, under the so-called Twenty-Eight
Hour Law (49 U.S.C. 80502, last amended in 1994), many types of carriers “may not
confine animals in a vehicle or vessel for more than 28 consecutive hours without
unloading the animals for feeding, water, and rest.”1
1 See also CRS Report RS22493, The Animal Welfare Act: Background and Selected Legislation,
by Geoffrey S. Becker; and CRS Report 94-731, Brief Summaries of Federal Animal Protection
Statutes
, by Henry Cohen.

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At the state level, laws to prevent deliberate animal cruelty sometimes apply to farm
animals, but few states have prescribed on-farm treatment standards. Some exceptions
are Florida, where voters in 2002 approved a ballot measure outlawing gestation crates
for pigs, and Arizona, where voters did the same, along with a veal stall ban, in 2006.
Criticisms of Animal Agriculture Practices. Many animal protection groups
assert that today’s intensive farming systems perpetuate standard practices that in their
view are harmful to animals’ well-being. Examples include:
! Rearing large numbers of livestock or poultry in close confinement with
little or no room for natural movement and activity (e.g., housing sows
in small gestation crates, chickens in battery cages);
! Isolating veal calves in small crates;
! Performing surgery such as docking hog tails, dehorning cattle, and
trimming poultry beaks (so that confined animals do not hurt each other
or their handlers);
! Permitting commercial movement of nonambulatory livestock
(“downers”) that are disabled due to sickness or injury;
! Not fully stunning poultry (which are not covered by the humane
slaughter act) and, sometimes, livestock (most of which are covered)
before slaughter.
Some of these groups link intensive animal agriculture with soil and water pollution,
food safety problems (e.g., misuse of animal drugs, and foodborne bacterial illnesses), and
the decline of smaller-scale, “family” farms. They also believe that if regulators approve
future applications of biotechnology — such as animal cloning, genetic alterations to
improve productivity, and the use of livestock as “factories” for pharmaceuticals and
human organs — animal well-being will be compromised. Some animal rights groups
advance the more controversial argument that humans have no right to use animals for
any purpose, including for food.
Defense of Animal Agriculture Practices. Farmers and ranchers maintain that
they understand their animals’ welfare needs and address them adequately. They express
concern that efforts by poorly informed critics could lead to costly and counterproductive
regulations harmful to their industry and the animals alike. Agricultural, food processing,
and a number of animal science groups have argued that support for science, education,
and voluntary guidelines are more effective ways of assuring animal welfare.
Recognizing that more customers are concerned about animal treatment, some major
food companies such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s have developed humane
animal care standards their suppliers must follow. Various industry groups have
published voluntary standards for care that they encourage members to meet, including
the American Meat Institute, American Sheep Industry Association, National Cattlemen’s
Beef Association, National Chicken Council, Pork Board, and United Egg Producers.
Several of these, along with Certified Humane Raised and Handled, and Free Farmed of
the American Humane Association, provide so-called third party certification programs
intended to assure consumers that products were derived from producers who followed
prescribed care standards. Some animal welfare groups contend that such voluntary
industry standards are not strong or specific enough, are not enforceable, and/or are
primarily marketing contrivances.

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In Congress
Members of Congress have offered various proposals to require changes in the
treatment of animals on the farm, during transport, or at slaughter. Members of the House
and Senate Agriculture Committees, which generally have jurisdiction over such bills,
have held hearings on various farm animal welfare issues, but they generally express a
preference for voluntary rather than regulatory approaches to improving animal care.
On-Farm Care. Under a key provision in the potentially sweeping Farm Animals
Anti-Cruelty Act (H.R. 6202), “[w]hoever, without justification, kills, mutilates,
disfigures, tortures, or intentionally causes an animal held for commercial use pain or
suffering, or has responsibility for an animal held for commercial use and fails to provide
food, water, shelter, and health care as is necessary to assure the animal’s health and well-
being appropriate to the animal’s age and species,” is subject to penalties of up to one year
in jail and/or $100,000 in fines. “Commercial use” would mean “use, or intended for use,
as food or fiber or for food or fiber production.” A separate bill, H.R. 1726, would
require the federal government to purchase products derived from animals only if they
were raised according to humane standards (i.e., had adequate shelter with sufficient space
to walk and move around with limbs fully extended, had adequate food and water with
no starvation or force-feeding, and had adequate veterinary care).
Humane Slaughter. The treatment of farm animals reached center stage in
February 2008, when USDA announced the largest-ever meat recall, by Hallmark/
Westland Meat Packing Co. The recall came after USDA-FSIS found that the facility for
at least two years did not always notify inspectors about cattle that had become
nonambulatory after they had been inspected, but before they were slaughtered for food.
FSIS regulations explicitly prohibit most nonambulatory (“downer”) cattle in human food,
because of their higher risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or “mad cow
disease”). Moreover, FSIS charged that the plant had violated the humane slaughter act,
which first came to light after animal welfare advocates secretly videotaped what they
described as employees inhumanely handling downer cattle before slaughter. The act
stipulates, among other things, that “[n]o method of slaughtering or handling in
connection with slaughtering shall be deemed to comply with the public policy of the
United States unless it is humane.”
In a number of subsequent 2008 hearings, FSIS came under strong criticism for
failing to enforce the act. This was despite the fact that Congress had included, in the
2002 farm law (P.L. 107-171, Section 10305), a resolution urging USDA to fully enforce
it and to report the number of violations to Congress annually. Since then, Congress has
directed millions of dollars to FSIS for full-time inspectors to oversee compliance, and
for incorporation of a humane tracking system into the agency’s field computer systems.2
In the 102nd through 104th Congresses, legislative proposals were introduced to
include poultry under the humane slaughter act, but no action was taken on them.
2 For additional details see CRS Report RS22819, Nonambulatory Livestock and the Humane
Methods of Slaughter Act
, by Geoffrey S. Becker.

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Downers. In 2005, the Senate-passed version of H.R. 2744, USDA’s FY2006
appropriation, included a floor amendment, sponsored by Senator Akaka, to prohibit
nonambulatory livestock (also called “downers”) from being used for human food. The
Akaka amendment would have applied not only to nonambulatory cattle (which by FSIS
regulation are already generally banned from the food supply), but also to any sheep,
swine, goats, horses, mules or other equines unable to stand or walk unassisted at
inspection. The House version lacked such a ban, and conferees removed the Senate
language prior to final passage (P.L. 109-97). The proposal has re-emerged in the 110th
Congress as S. 394 and H.R. 661. The bills also would require that all nonambulatory
livestock be humanely euthanized rather than slaughtered. S. 2770 contains similar
provisions and also would set gradually increasing penalties for plants that violate the law.
Horse Slaughter. For many years, horse protection groups have sought to end the
slaughter of horses for human food. Policy issues focus on the acceptability of the practice
and on how to dispose of or care for unwanted horses no longer being slaughtered. Until
2007, two foreign-owned plants in Texas and one in Illinois slaughtered horses for human
food (105,000 in 2006), all for export. On January 19, 2007, however, a federal appeals
court panel declared a Texas law banning commerce in horsemeat to be enforceable,
effectively closing the two plants there. The remaining foreign plant in Illinois closed later
in 2007 after a federal appeals court ruled that a new state law banning the practice was
constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in June 2008.
These developments had occurred as Congress considered a succession of measures
to ban or otherwise limit equine slaughter. During respective floor debates on USDA’s
FY2006 appropriation (P.L. 109-97), the House and Senate approved amendments to ban
use of appropriated funds to pay for the inspection of these horses. The presumption was
that since inspection is required for any meat to enter the human food supply, a ban on
inspection funding would halt the practice. However, the three plants petitioned USDA
for voluntary ante-mortem inspection services, as authorized by the Agricultural Marketing
Act of 1946, with the ante-mortem portion funded by user fees. USDA agreed to this plan,
which took effect in early 2006. Subsequently, the FY2008 USDA appropriation (§ 741,
Division A, of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, P.L. 110-161) both prohibited
the use of appropriated funds to inspect horses prior to slaughter for human food, and also
the USDA rule (see above) that provided for the collection of user fees.
Animal welfare groups have continued to seek new federal legislation, such as
companion bills H.R. 503/S. 311, and H.R. 6598, permanently ending horse slaughter for
human food. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), which opposes the
bills, asserts that horses that otherwise would have been transported and slaughtered in the
United States — under more humane conditions — are now going to Mexico and Canada
for processing. In 2007, more than 44,000 horses were shipped for slaughter to Mexico
and 35,000 to Canada, respectively a 312% and 41% increase from 2006, according to
AVMA. Bill supporters argue that one of the intents of H.R. 503/S. 311 and of H.R. 6598
is to prevent such exports; bill critics counter that once horses leave the country,
enforcement and oversight would be problematic at best.3 A separately pending bill (H.R.
6278) would prohibit the interstate transportation of horses in double-decked trailers.
3 See CRS Report RS21842, Horse Slaughter Prevention Bills and Issues, by Geoffrey S. Becker.