How Tim Walz explains the Democratic Party's pro-factory farm policies

Shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate last month, a photo of the Minnesota governor cradling an adorable piglet in his arms at the 2019 Minnesota State Fair went viral, delighting Democratic supporters, activists and pundits alike.

Earlier this month, Walz tweeted that he had “made a new friend” during a campaign stop at a dairy farm where he bottle-fed a calf.

Many politicians come across as a bit stuffy, trading in suits for flannel and turkey legs for obligatory farm visits and state fairs, but Waltz fits in seamlessly with a genuine love for farm animals and a heartfelt enthusiasm for eating them.

At this year’s Minnesota State Fair, he declared skewered pork the “Breakfast of Champions.” In another viral video from last year’s fair, Waltz’s daughter tells him she doesn’t eat turkey because she’s a vegetarian. Waltz replies that Minnesota is the largest turkey-producing state in the country and that turkey isn’t meat. “Turkey is special,” he jokes.

The images will help bolster Walz’s wholesome vibe and “Big Dad Energy,” exude “Minnesota sweetness” and hopefully help Democrats clinch votes in key Midwestern and Rust Belt states.

I too feel like a small-time person caught up in the Harris-Waltz craze and poking holes in Waltz’s innocent brilliance. But there’s a darker side to this story. Walz has a long history of providing free advertising and public funding to the meat and dairy industries that are destroying Minnesota’s precious waterways, mistreating animals, and endangering public health and vulnerable workers.

To be fair, Walz is doing what every other politician, Republican or Democrat, does to survive in rural areas. Minnesota is the largest producer of turkey, pork, dairy, and corn and soybeans, the main crops used to feed livestock. Although only about 1% of Minnesota households make their living from farming, agricultural corporations exert a huge influence over federal and state agricultural policy by generously donating campaign funds to candidates, including Democrats from farm states like Walz. And they use that money to sell the story that big agriculture is beyond criticism because it “feeds the world.”

As Democrats watch their rural votes slip, someone like Walz, who balances Harris’ image as a San Francisco liberal, has obvious appeal for the party. But in what may ultimately be a quixotic attempt to appeal to rural Midwestern voters, Democratic leaders are compromising other areas of commitment to environmental protection, workers’ rights and public health by focusing on promoting the meat industry and downplaying regulation of its ills.

That the Democratic base appears to be celebrating Waltz’s farm-friendly image with little scrutiny shows just how hard opponents of factory farming must work to educate Americans about the cruelty of our food system. Like the misleading cartoons of happy, “humanely raised” pigs and cows on meat packaging (which often mean little on the farms themselves), Waltz’s photos with farm-raised baby animals reinforce the false, romantic image that big agriculture has successfully burned into the public consciousness.

However, the reality is far from healthy.

Out of context, the photo of Waltz holding a piglet at the Minnesota State Fair seems innocent and adorable. But what about the pork industry, and the lives of those piglets? Not really.

The photo was taken at a pavilion sponsored by Christensen Farms, the ninth-largest pork company in the United States, and run by the Minnesota Pork Board. Virtually all pigs raised for food in the United States are raised in factory farms, including Christensen Farms, with a consistent set of practices, as revealed in a shocking 2015 investigation by animal rights groups. Breeding sows (pigs that give birth to piglets and are then raised for slaughter) are confined to cages so small they can barely move for the rest of their lives, repeatedly pregnant and toiling away, churning out piglets until their productivity wanes and they are sent to the slaughterhouse. The Minnesota Pork Producers Association, a sister organization of the Minnesota Pork Board, supports keeping pregnant pigs in small cages and lobbies against basic environmental measures.

It is also common in the U.S. pork industry to feed breeding pigs ground up piglet intestines to help build up their immunity to disease.

The piglets’ teeth are cut, their tails are docked and the boars’ testicles are removed, but no painkillers are used. After spending their short lives in dark, filthy warehouses, the pigs are sent on the gruelling journey to the slaughterhouse where they are rendered unconscious in carbon dioxide gas chambers, an excruciatingly painful procedure.

Minnesota’s vast turkey industry, where almost all of the birds are raised on factory farms, is similarly abusive. Last year, animal rights groups found stomach-churning conditions at Jennie-O, the state’s largest turkey producer: turkeys too emaciated to walk, sick, with live birds pecking at dead and rotting birds, some with visible injuries, and other signs of cannibalism common in the poultry industry. (Jennie-O told Vox at the time that it “takes the welfare of the animals in our care seriously and has rigorous animal care standards throughout our supply chain.”)

Jennie-O’s parent company, Hormel Foods, is headquartered in the district where Walz served before running for governor, and he has promoted the company’s products and appointed its former CEO to the state’s economic council.

You may remember Waltz’s photo with a dairy calf earlier this month, which masked a grim reality of dairy farming: cows bred to produce more milk often suffer from more leg and metabolic problems, as well as higher rates of painful udder inflammation.

The campaign stops were on smaller dairy farms, which account for an increasingly smaller share of the milk Americans buy at grocery stores. Today, most dairy cows never venture into large pastures, and farms typically separate calves from their mothers soon after birth, house them alone and bottle-feed them so farmers can drink their mothers’ milk.

In Minnesota, a state with 10,000 lakes, livestock and the synthetic fertilizers used to grow the corn they eat account for most of the state’s nitrate pollution in the water, with four in 10 water bodies so polluted they don’t meet basic health standards. Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency directed Minnesota agencies to immediately address high levels of nitrates in drinking water, which thousands of Minnesotans are exposed to and can cause serious health problems. The EPA also urged the state to do a better job of monitoring contamination from livestock waste.

The Minnesota state government has limited ability to police factory farms because court decisions have largely exempted them from Clean Water Act regulations. And of course, Walz can’t take responsibility for a problem that began decades ago because of the unpleasant realities of farm-state politics. But environmental groups and some state lawmakers argue that Minnesota could do more. And yet, Walz appears to have said very little about the factory farms that pollute the state’s waterways.

Prior to becoming Governor of Minnesota, Walz represented Minnesota in the U.S. House of Representatives for six terms, during which he voted against two significant agricultural pollution measures. As a member of the House Agriculture Committee, he played a major role in negotiating the Farm Bill, the multi-year legislative package that sets federal agricultural policy, which during his tenure put increasing amounts of funding into the hands of farmers who grow food for livestock.

Walz has pushed for federal and state “conservation” funding to help farmers implement more sustainable practices, but in the end, little progress has been made in solving the problem, and some of the federal conservation money goes to large meat and dairy producers who use environmentally questionable farming practices.

Governor Walz’s office declined to comment on the matter, referring instead to a statement from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. “The Governor has consistently advocated for and implemented programs that allow agriculture to be profitable while also benefiting the environment,” the statement read, noting that Governor Walz supports rules that impose certain limits on environmental protection funding and fertilizer application.

If Harris wins, Walz could have influence over how the administration shapes agriculture policy, which would likely mean more bipartisan support for factory farming, as has happened in the past.

Meanwhile, Harris has a remarkably strong record on the environment and animal welfare, and as California’s attorney general, she defended the state’s ban on foie gras and the confinement of egg-laying hens to small cages.

Waltz’s rural loyalties could make him an effective conveyor of reforms promoted by a Harris administration — if he’s willing to stand up to big agriculture. But so far there’s little evidence he’s ready to take on that role.

There is little courage that farm state politicians are willing to show to call out the meat industry for its misdeeds and insist on meaningful regulation, and doing so in the middle of a presidential campaign where several battleground states have key agricultural sectors could have politically disastrous consequences.

So instead we see photos of candidates with cute piglets and calves caught up in factory farming systems — images that reinforce the very myths that make it so hard for elected officials to stand up to big agriculture, but whose political calculations have led to the polluted water, injured workers, and abused animals we see today.

While a second term for President Trump is likely to be even friendlier to big agriculture than the Harris-Waltz administration, the gap between Republicans and Democrats on farm policy is smaller than you might think.

“We won’t go back” has become the de facto campaign slogan of the Harris-Waltz campaign, but their administration probably won’t get us any further in the fight against factory farming.