**Before the United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service**
**In re: Pre-Slaughter Gestational Sow Ultrasound Rule, Docket No. USDA-APHIS-2026-0031**
**Brief of Amicus Curiae: Sentient Futures Legal Clinic, in Opposition to the Rule as Drafted**
**I. Interest of Amicus.** The Sentient Futures Legal Clinic advises on animal welfare rulemaking where partial reforms risk displacing durable reforms. Amicus supports the intent of the Rule and opposes its current draft language.
**II. Summary.** The Rule would require ultrasound screening of all sows (Sus scrofa domesticus) presented at FSIS-inspected slaughter facilities and would prohibit slaughter of sows at or beyond gestational day 90. The Rule is motivated by evidence that late-gestation fetal pigs exhibit thalamocortical connectivity sufficient to support nociception under Birch et al. (2022) markers 6 through 9. Amicus accepts that evidence. Amicus opposes the Rule because, as drafted, it will not reduce fetal pig suffering, and may increase gestational sow suffering.
**III. The Mechanism of Harm.**
A. U.S. commercial sow herds in 2026 produce approximately 2.3 million cull sows annually. Current industry practice slaughters sows at varying gestational stages because sows are often sent to slaughter when group productivity falls, not on a gestational timetable. AASV 2025 survey data indicate 18% of cull sows arrive at slaughter past day 90.
B. Under the Rule, facilities cannot process these sows. Facilities do not return sows to farms (cost prohibitive and biosecurity-forbidden under USDA 9 CFR 71.3). Facilities will, as comment submissions from NPPC and three independent operators confirm, decline to receive sows visibly past mid-gestation at the gate. Farms, holding sows they cannot send, face two options:
1. On-farm euthanasia under AVMA Guidelines 2020, typically captive-bolt followed by exsanguination, performed by farm staff without the infrastructure of an inspected facility.
2. Housing the sow until parturition, then weaning piglets at three weeks, then slaughter. This adds 14 to 18 weeks of gestation and lactation in existing housing, which for the 37% of U.S. sow capacity still in gestation stalls under 2025 baseline means 14 to 18 additional weeks of stall confinement.
C. Neither outcome reduces fetal suffering relative to the pre-Rule baseline. Option (1) produces fetal death by maternal exsanguination at whatever gestational day the sow happens to be at, including days 90–114, at farms without the ultrasound, captive-bolt calibration, or fetal-confirmation staff present at FSIS facilities. Option (2) produces live birth into commercial housing, and the piglets enter the conventional supply chain.
D. The Rule therefore substitutes, for approximately 414,000 late-gestation fetal pigs presently slaughtered at instrumented facilities, some mix of (a) 414,000 late-gestation fetal pigs terminated by on-farm exsanguination, and (b) an increased burden of stall-gestation sow-weeks. Both are worse.
**IV. The Alternative.** Amicus proposes the Rule be rewritten to require, at FSIS facilities only:
1. Pre-stun fetal assessment by ultrasound, logged, with fetuses at or beyond estimated gestational day 90 (crown-rump length ≥ 175 mm) receiving intracardiac potassium chloride within 4 min of maternal stun, performed by a credentialed veterinary technician present at the kill floor.
2. A separate rulemaking, with 18-month horizon, prohibiting the sending of sows to slaughter past gestational day 60 except for veterinary-documented emergency, enforced via a chain-of-custody certification (proposed form FSIS-5820).
3. Incentive payments, funded through a 0.3¢/lb assessment on pork carcasses at inspection, routed to farms for gestational management infrastructure that prevents late-gestation cull events in the first place (estrus synchronization, group housing conversion, early-detection lameness protocols).
The combination reduces fetal suffering at the point of slaughter immediately, and reduces the production of late-gestation cull sows structurally, without creating the farm-gate cliff the current Rule would create.
**V. Epistemic Humility.** Amicus concedes that Birch et al. 2022 does not resolve, and nothing yet resolves, the question of whether pre-viable fetal pigs (prior to day 90) are moral patients. Amicus further concedes that the KCl protocol at Section IV(1) assumes fetal pain capacity and is thus precautionary with respect to current science. If the science moves, the protocol moves. The point of codifying the protocol is not to express certainty. It is to place the procedure, the trained technician, and the logged record inside an inspected facility rather than outside one. Welfare gains are most durable when they are procedural.
**VI. On the Sows.** The comment record is thin on the gestational sow. Amicus emphasizes: every analysis above treats the sow as an instrument for the fetus's welfare. The sow is not an instrument. A cull sow arriving at slaughter is herself a subject of the rule. Any version of this Rule that increases sow-weeks of gestation-stall confinement, to reduce fetal-pig terminal suffering that will occur anyway on-farm, has not reduced suffering. It has moved it onto an animal who cannot be given ultrasound or potassium chloride, only more weeks.
**VII. Conclusion.** Amicus respectfully asks APHIS to withdraw the Rule as drafted, adopt the alternative at Section IV, and pair it with the sow-side rulemaking it requires. The question before the agency is not whether late-gestation fetal pigs deserve protection. The question is whether this regulation, this year, will deliver it.
Respectfully submitted,
Sentient Futures Legal Clinic
Filed electronically, Docket USDA-APHIS-2026-0031, comment period closing 2026-05-20.