Surveillance of oligarchs / March 12, 2026
Jeff and Deb Hansen are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep the state friendly to their businesses.
The Iowa Pork Queen stands near the Iowa Pork Producers Association tent at the Iowa State Fair in August 2019. Jeff and Deb Hansen are major donors to the Iowa Pork Producers Association.(Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call via AP Images) There are approximately 75 million pigs are raised on farms across the United States, about a third of which are in Iowa, the nation’s leading pork state. Jeff and Deb Hansen founded Iowa Select Farms, now the state’s largest pork producer, in 1992. The Hansens offer a case study in how regional oligarchs can deploy their wealth, political influence and charitable donations to defend their businesses against local, state and federal regulations. By taking over Iowa’s political apparatus, the Hansens are directing national pork policy.
The pork industry has been consolidating since the 1990s, with 70 percent drop of the number of hog farms, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Large conglomerates have gradually replaced small, integrated farms that once used modest amounts of waste from their pigs and other animals as fertilizer.
As the poultry industry consolidated, the Hansens became a successful manufacturer. concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO). The large production sheds, called “containments,” can hold up to 2,500 sows, which are stocked with antibiotics to help them survive their cramped, windowless existence. CAFOs generate colossal quantities of manure waste, forming gargantuan anaerobic lagoons that pollute the air and pollute local water supplies around the farm.
By the early 1990s, the Hansens’ CAFO business was bringing in $90 million a year. “After gradually expanding their containment construction business,” writes Iowa native Austin Frerick, author of Barons: money, power and corruption in the American food industry”the Hansens decided they could also make money raising their own pigs.” Starting with a herd of 10,000 sows, Iowa Select Farms has grown to become the fourth largest pork producer in the country, with approximately 260,000 sows.
These pig farms can be felt from miles around, to the great detriment of their neighbors. In 2003, the company settled a lawsuit filed by Sac County residents, who complained that a 30,000-hog farm produced foul odors, noxious gases and swarms of flies. An expert witness for the plaintiffs testified that the farm produced as much waste as a town of 90,000 to 150,000 people.
The Hansens’ wealth has since increased, from $272 million in 2024 to about $1 billion in 2026, according to Wealth-X. But from their 7,000-square-foot mansion in a leafy, gated neighborhood of Des Moines, the Hansens don’t notice the droppings. They also don’t smell the manure lagoons from their private jet (rumored to be named When the hens have teeth).
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In 2020, pork prices fell when the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the market. Iowa Select Farms responded by exterminating thousands of pigs. According to The interceptionthe company shut down the CAFOs’ ventilation systems, suffocating and overheating the pigs as ammonia from the manure lagoons lingered in the air. Video cameras recorded the agony of these terrified and sentient animals, and one whistleblower reported being ordered to “euthanize” the surviving pigs with captive bolt guns.
In the 1990s, as political pressure to regulate CAFOs increased, the Hansens fought to craft legislation in the Iowa Legislature aimed at establishing guardrails for the industry. Passed in 1995, the resulting bill stripped the power of county boards of supervisors to deny building permits to CAFOs, a major blow to local control of land use. The law allows CAFOs to be built within a quarter mile of residences, a distance that does little to diminish odors and flies or environmental damage such as groundwater contamination.
Over the next few years, the Hansens discouraged further regulation of CAFOs by donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians. For example, they contributed more than $300,000 to Republican Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds, making Deb Hansen its largest individual donor. They also worked to bring the state’s entire congressional delegation to the pork industry.
As with many other oligarchs, the Hansens’ charitable giving is an extension of their private power, subsidized by taxpayers. In 2019, Governor Reynolds attended a gala for the Deb and Jeff Hansen Foundation, where she auctioned off a private lunch and tour of the Iowa Capitol with her. The winning bid of $4,250 came from Gary Lynch, another Iowa pork baron and GOP donor. (The largest charitable donation listed by the Hansens Foundation in his most recent filing or $317,760 to the Iowa Pork Producers Association. The same year, he donated $25,000 to Children’s Cancer Connection.)
Fortunately, there are those who challenge the Hansens’ exploitative farming. In 2018, California voters passed Proposition 12, which established baseline animal welfare standards for farms and for products sold in the state. For example, Proposition 12 mandates cage-free systems for hens and minimum square footage for breeding sows.
The pork industry has sued repeatedly to stop Proposition 12, but in its 5-4 decision in National Pork Producers Council v. Rossthe Supreme Court upheld the law. The Iowa Pork Producers Association is now trying to overturn what U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) called “blue state bacon bans.” In July 2025, she presented Save Our Bacon Actwhich would prohibit states from passing laws like Prop. 12. All four members of Iowa’s congressional delegation are sponsors.
In and 2025 opinion piece In The Washington TimesHinson touted states’ rights. “One of the most effective ways to combat bureaucratic overload is to decentralize power from Washington and bring agencies closer to the communities they serve,” she wrote. But the Save Our Bacon Act enshrines the Hansens’ evident lack of concern for public health and animal welfare as a de facto federal standard. Oligarchs and those who support them love to sing the praises of local control, except when it interferes with their power and profits. States rights for me, but not for you.
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