Supreme Court denies pork industry appeal of animal welfare law

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Amid a flurry of high-profile US Supreme Court rulings, a case that the high court refused to take up has animal welfare advocates claiming a big win. 

The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a petition to review the case of Triumph Foods, LLC v. Campbell, which sought to override a Massachusetts’ animal welfare law known as Question 3. Petitioners wanted the high court to find that the federal law preempts the rules imposed by Massachusetts. The law — which is similar to California’s Proposition 12 law — requires that hogs, calves and chickens that are on confined farms or sold in the state are raised with adequate room to turn around, lie down and extend their limbs. 

A brief submitted to the Supreme Court by 24 states in support of Triumph Foods said Question 3 “appears only to regulate sales of pork that occur in Massachusetts. But its reach is much broader.” The state law “denies market access to out-of-state pork farmers and processors unless their practices comply with Massachusetts’s mandates,” the brief said, adding that Question 3 would raise the estimated cost to raise a sow from between $1,600 and $2,500 up to $3,400. 

Triumph Foods cited the court’s June 25 ruling in favor of the former Monsanto pesticide company as a precedent that should apply in its case, arguing that state laws cannot preempt federal regulation. In the Monsanto case, the Supreme Court ruled that a federal law regulating pesticides bars states from enforcing claims related to labeling.

In an opposition brief,  Massachusetts’ Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, the named defendant in the case, argued that  “petitioners have provided no evidence to support the dire predictions within their complaint of ‘enormous costs on pork farmers.’”

The Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the case comes after the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued an opinion in 2025 that upheld Question 3. 

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court declined to review one more tedious pork industry challenge to a voter-approved state farm animal welfare law,” said Rebecca Cary, managing attorney at Humane World for Animals. “The law has now been upheld at every level of the  federal judiciary, confirming that Question 3 is constitutional and not preempted by federal law.” 

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court declined to review one more tedious pork industry challenge to a voter-approved state farm animal welfare law.” – Rebecca Cary, Humane World for Animals.

Triumph Foods did not return a request for comment on the petition denial. 

The petition comes as challenges to California’s and Massachusetts’ laws are also playing out in federal policy discussions, as industry groups have pushed Congress to include a provision — often referred to as the “Save Our Bacon Act” — in the upcoming Farm Bill.  The House draft included such a provision, while the Senate version, released last week, did not. 

Rob Brenneman, president of the National Pork Producers Council, which has led Save Our Bacon Act advocacy and spearheaded the Proposition 12 legal challenge that landed at the Supreme Court, said in a statement that “America’s pork producers will continue to advocate for a Prop. 12 fix in the formal farm bill like our livelihood depends on it — because it does.”

However, the Save Our Bacon Act faces an uphill battle. Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, tweeted his opposition to any form of a Save Our Bacon Act making it into the Senate Farm Bill and vowed he “will fight to keep it out.”

“Leader Schumer’s opposition to the Save Our Bacon Act is a major blow to Big Pork’s campaign to erase animal welfare laws and override the will of voters,” said

Matthew Dominguez, executive director of the farmed animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming. “ The Senate Farm Bill’s exclusion of this dangerous provision shows that Congress is hearing the growing opposition to this industry power grab.”

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