You can take your dog or cat on an airplane, and stay with your pet in many hotels. But why can’t a companion animal travel with your family on a passenger train?

The House Agriculture Committee, late last night, approved its version of the Farm Bill, and with it included an important provision to close a loophole in the federal animal fighting statute and help crack down on people who attend and bring children to dogfights and cockfights. The animal fighting amendment, offered by Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., passed the committee by a bipartisan vote of 28 to 17. It’s based on H.R. 366, sponsored by Reps. Tom Marino, R-Pa., McGovern, John Campbell, R-Calif., and Jim Moran, D-Va.

The House Agriculture Committee will take up the Farm Bill tomorrow morning, and will consider an amendment offered by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, that seeks to negate most state and local laws regarding the production or manufacture of agriculture products. It’s a radical federal overreach that would undermine the longstanding Constitutional rights of states to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens and local businesses.

As the House and Senate agriculture committees are both scheduled to take up the Farm Bill next week, there is much at stake for animal welfare. The Senate draft of the bill includes a provision to crack down on people who attend and bring children to dogfights and cockfights, based on the Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act.

I’ve pointed out many times on this blog that the horse slaughter industry in the U.S. is cruel and predatory, gathering and killing horses in particularly gruesome ways. It’s a sad fate for so many American horses—iconic companion animals not raised for human consumption but often ending up on foreign dinner plates. The entire horse slaughter pipeline, from auction to transport to the cruel slaughter process, is terrifying and inherently inhumane for horses.

I was a guest this week on SiriusXM’s POTUS channel, to discuss the need for the Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act.

In what other professional sport is it acceptable for 24 athletes to die each week? With millions of Americans watching the Kentucky Derby this weekend, it’s an important time to take stock of the horseracing industry and the critical reforms that are needed to protect the welfare of its equine competitors—because the toll in animal deaths and injuries year after year is far too great and so many of them are preventable.