Lewis Bollard

Well, the problem is, so this bill stopping states from regulating farm and welfare meaningfully, this bill could not pass on its own.

So if it was put on the floor of the House and the Senate, it would lose.

This is why they're putting it in the farm bill.

So, the Farm Bill is this huge piece of legislation that includes all the farm subsidies, it includes all the food stamp assistance.

And so, this is a bill that is considered a must-pass piece of legislation and is decided based on issues that most politicians consider far bigger than the issue of where the state laws are wiped out.

And so, what the industry is banking on is that once they've got this in the text of the bill, people aren't going to sink the bill over this one provision and it will sail through even though it's a deeply unpopular policy.

I mean, I think the good news here is we have public opinion overwhelmingly on our side.

We don't need to be corrupt, right?

It's like the industry needs to be corrupt because they are trying to get politicians to do something that their voters strongly disapprove of.

And so I think what we need to do is mobilize that base of support and show how real it is.

And so I think we need, for instance, to mobilize animal welfare advocates.

We need to mobilize farmers who benefit from higher welfare standards.

And we need to provide them with an equal footing to the footing that the industry has provided to the very small number of factory farmers who have a stake in the system.

And that requires the same things the industry are doing.

So, I mean, it requires flying people to DC.

It requires getting people to go and talk to their politicians in their local district.

And yes, it also requires money because the industry is putting up so much money.

Politicians need to see that there is also money on the other side of this issue.

My sense of what the industry does is they get a whole bunch of their executives to max out on donations to politicians.

the politicians then give them meetings.