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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Wednesday, March 05, 2025
As Congress prepares to write a new farm bill, animal welfare advocates are preparing to safeguard California’s Proposition 12 and similar laws regulating agricultural practices while also pushing to tighten standards for dog breeders, ban the export of horses for slaughter, and eliminate the last vestiges of animal fighting and dog racing in the United States.
The House and Senate Agriculture Committees are still several months away from voting on a new farm bill, but the major issues in each of the 12 titles are coming into focus even as lawmakers continue offering new proposals they’d like to see included. Here is a summary of the issues in play as well as notable proposals lawmakers would like to see included in the bill.
Assured of President Donald Trump's support, the Senate and then the House passed a fiscal 2019 spending agreement Thursday to avert another government shutdown and fund USDA, Interior, FDA and other departments and agencies important to agriculture through Sept. 30.
House and Senate negotiators are likely to provide another infusion of cash into rural broadband development, but an effort to repeal the Obama-era “waters of the U.S. rule” doesn’t appear likely to survive the talks on fiscal 2019 spending bills.