Can California’s Pig Law Save Our Bacon?

Can bacon save us? Americans’ love affair with the BLT, bacon-egg-and-cheese-on-a-roll, the Baconater (Wendy’s is pro-adoption, after all), and even brussels sprouts with bacon — you can continue the litany as you head to the refrigerator — would suggest as much. But could a defeat of the pork industry’s lawsuit against a California law insisting on a little mercy for pigs before they are slaughtered for our enjoyment actually save innocent unborn lives in the end?

Matthew Scully wrote beautifully earlier this week in “A Brief for the Pigs: The Case of National Pork Producers Council v. Ross.” He opened by quoting the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, a religion editor of National Review and the founding editor of First Things, saying that “the horrors perpetrated against pigs on industrial farms” was a matter “that warrants public and governmental attention.”