On the first day of the new year, California’s Proposition 12 animal welfare statute will go into effect.

The groundbreaking new law, also known as the Farm Animal Confinement Initiative, sets new standards for how certain farm animals are treated. It ensures animals have more space and bans the sale of non-compliant products.

In particular, the law will effectively ban California’s pig gestation crates, which are basically cramped areas that confine pregnant sows for months at a time. The law also prohibits businesses from selling eggs, pork, and veal from animals housed in conditions that don’t meet the newest standards.

The National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation challenged the law in the U.S. Supreme Court but lost 5-4.

However, Congressional Republicans hope to pass the EATS Act, which would likely end Proposition 12 and other animal welfare laws nationwide, not that there are many. The law ensures that businesses can participate in interstate commerce without being hindered by other state laws.

The conditions and ways in which pigs are treated are often described by animal rights campaigners as cruel and exploitative. Most don’t live long, and the ones that do spend most of their lives in horrible conditions, especially sows.

Multiple undercover investigations have shown the horrific conditions inside multiple types of pig farms, where even the minimal laws and regulations are flouted.

Female pigs, or sows, are artificially inseminated and give birth to large litters while confined in small gestation crates that completely restrict their movement for months at a time, according to a report by The Humane League, a Maryland-based animal rights group. The sows will spend most of their fertile lives in the creates, which are just big enough for their bodies. Once they are no longer needed, they are euthanized.

The sows exhibited natural maternal instincts, noted the report, yet experienced distress when separated from their piglets at just three weeks, much earlier than the 10-to-17-week period seen among other types of pigs outside of farms.

Male piglets undergo painful castrations, often without anesthetic, to alter the smell and taste of their meat. Similarly, pigs’ tails are clipped also without pain relief to prevent tail-biting in cramped conditions. Ear notching is another painful practice used for identification in overcrowded farms.

The pigs are bred to grow rapidly, reaching market weight in six months. This fast growth leads to health issues like arthritis, and they often endure long, harsh transport conditions to slaughterhouses without food or water, leading to illness or death.

At slaughterhouses, pigs face inhumane killing methods, sometimes remaining conscious during the process. A typical slaughterhouse will kill more than 1,000 baby pigs every hour, according to the Humane League report. Because of the speed at which the pigs are killed, activists say it’s not guaranteed they are entirely dead when lowered into boiling water to remove hair.

While the vast majority of Americans eat bacon, approximately 268 million in 2020, many are unhappy about how the pigs are treated. Among pork-buying Americans, 66% found the use of gestation crates objectionable, according to a 2021 study. Over 50% were also not happy about the tails of piglets being clipped. Nearly 80% said they’d instead buy pork from a company that committed to ending the confinement of pregnant pigs.

Despite the well-known and awful conditions pigs are forced to live in and the subsequent public disapproval, very few states have pig welfare statutes in place.

By 2026, ten states will have a gestation crate ban. That will cover less than 8% of the U.S. hog breeding inventory.

But if EATS passes, those bans may be repealed.