Contra Bentham’s Bulldog on the Save Our Bacon Act
Bentham’s Bulldog has published a series of pieces on the Save Our Bacon Act, urging people to call and email their senators, donate, and spread the word.
Things we agree on
Factory farming and gestation crates are immoral
Fighting the Save Our Bacon Act is highly important for animal welfare.
Disagreements
Bentham’s Bulldog has made several factual errors in his posts, and did not correct them when I and others pushed back.
Error #1: Luna Amendment
This is not very important, and the time of importance for it has passed, but Bentham’s Bulldog falsely claimed that the Luna Amendment was dead. See this comment, although I won’t go into too much detail.
Error #2: Pennies Per Animal
Bentham’s Bulldog claimed “And yet even then, they might be drowned out by ghastly agribusinesses who torture pigs to save literally pennies per animal.”
The linked tweet, however, says pennies per dollar, not pennies per animal. Here’s a quote from the tweet:
Confirmed: “cents on the dollar” is all the pork industry saves by using these inhumane gestation crates and farrowing crates. Here are some estimates from frontier AI models, INCLUDING THE TRANSITION COST amortized over 5 years: grok-4.3: 4 ¢/$ opus-4-7: 5 ¢/$ gpt-5.5: 7 ¢/$ gemini-3.1-pro: 8 ¢/$
Justin S and I corrected that statement in the comments section, yet Bentham’s Bulldog did not respond or correct the misstatement.
Error #3: The AMPA PAC (most important)
In this post, Bentham’s Bulldog recommended that people “Donate to the AMPA, which is campaigning to help defeat the bill.”. In the comments section, he stated that “The money they have through the pac is only spent on opposing this bill”. There are 2 problems with this statement:
The link is to the AMPA 501(c)4, not their PAC.
According to FEC data, the American Meat Producers PAC has spent money on legal fees, transaction fees, and Angie Craig for Minnesota. (7/8/2026 EDIT: this previously misspelled her name as Annie Craig)
The AMPA does not brand itself as a single issue organization fighting the Save Our Bacon Act. I find it unlikely that all their donations go to fighting the Save Our Bacon Act. However, I would like to hear arguments about whether they are an effective animal charity.
My Levels of Confidence
I am not an expert in this area. I would welcome corrections from other people who are. If I had to give confidence levels, I would say:
99% about the pennies per animal quote
85% that the AMPA PAC isn’t only spent towards opposing the bill.
50% that AMPA donations are the most effective animal welfare donation for the time being. I’m most interested in getting answers to this question.
Conclusion
Having accurate information about animal welfare advocacy is extremely important to saving as many animals as we can. I am now unsure if I have made ineffective donations by donating to the AMPA. For this reason, I hope that Bentham’s Bulldog corrects his false statements, and I would like more clarification on the AMPA.
Re Luna amendment, there was an additional Luna amendment that was trying to remove the SOB provision that died (even though the pesticide one went through). That was what I was referring to. https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/farming-business-management/amendment-to-strike-down-save-our-bacon-act-rejected
You’re right about 2, fixed. I didn’t see the comment pointing this out as I don’t check comments on posts more than a day after posting (otherwise I’d have way too many to check as I get a lot of comments).
Re 3, Didn’t mean to use the word PAC in the comment, was an error (not sure if I was confused at time or just a typo.). But the ampa themselves—not the PAC—are the things the donation link was to, and they’re just defeating sob. Other stuff the PAC is doing is also to defeat SOB (Craig is a big opponent of it).
I apologize for being unnecessarily combative in my post.
I’m inclined to believe you here
Thank you for correcting this error (though it’s still a bit weird, pennies per item of bacon is not the exact same as pennies per dollar, though maybe it’s roughly the same...). Your not checking comments a day after posting makes the error make more sense and be less bad.
This updates my estimate of P(AMPA spends all their money on defeating SOB) to a bit higher. I still wish I could see a primary source say this though.
I’m confused as to how Angie Craig’s campaign would help defeat the Save Our Bacon Act. Elections are in November, and the Farm Bill will be done by then, right? I may be confused about this.
Any money sent to a 501(c)4 organization cannot be used on political donations, PAC activities, or advertisements recommending votes for a specific candidate.
I don’t represent AMPA and can’t speak to their fundraising strategy. Our teams work pretty closely together on implementation and will be meeting with Angie Craig together in DC soon.
Please just know that any money sent directly to their c(4) can only be used on issue advocacy, not direct political activity. PAC spending comes from an entirely separate pot of money with similar names and, often, people on the operations side.
2. If it’s pennies per dollar it’s still pennies per item of product, but I’ll change.
3. Remember Craig is supported by the PAC not the 501(c)4. So your money that goes to the 501(c)4 is going wholly to direct issue advocacy (see Leah’s comment as well). Just fwiw this isn’t disputed by the people in the know who are involved.