Senator Cory Booker became the first vegan senate on the Senate Agriculture Committee this week.
Former presidential nominee, Booker’s mission is to create a better, fairer food system for both people and animals. He went vegan back in 2014 and has been advocating for change ever since.
He’s particularly concerned with factory farming and aims to see reform happen in the world of agriculture.
New Jersey Global reported that Booker said:
“Our food system is deeply broken. Family farmers are struggling and their farms are disappearing, while big agriculture conglomerates get bigger and enjoy greater profits. Meanwhile, healthy, fresh food is hard to find and even harder to afford in rural and urban communities alike. In the richest country on the planet, over 35 million Americans from every walk of life are food insecure.”
Cory Booker’s Campaign For Animal Rights
Though he doesn’t advocate that everyone should go vegan, Booker does do a great job at meeting people in the middle. He wants to work with small farmers and fight against larger factory farms. He recognizes that small farms, that do less harm, are suffering because of Big Ag.
He said to Vox:
“This is not how we raised livestock 70 years ago. We’ve gone from raising animals in a far more humane, pasture-based model to one where we’re producing food in hyper-confined, concentrated, enclosed buildings that produce these massive lagoons of waste that are poisoning our streams and our rivers.”
In 2019, he created a bill called the Farm System Reform Act (FSRA). The proposed bill was aimed at moving animal farming away from the practices used in factory farms. Under the bill, no one could open new large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations. Additionally, those operations currently in existence would have certain limits to their growth (in the meat and dairy sectors).
Beyond that, FSRA had a long-term goal of creating a cleaner environment by holding meatpackers accountable for the pollution and waste they create.
Though the bill has yet to pass, it is gaining more support in the senate as time passes.
