More than 80 House of Representatives members introduced a bill recently that would prohibit the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from requiring an issuer to disclose information related to certain greenhouse gas emissions.
The legislation, Protect Farmers from the SEC Act, would not allow the SEC to require an issuer to disclose emissions from upstream and downstream activities in the issuer’s value chain arising from farms.
The bill stems from the SEC’s Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors rule, which the agency has said would protect investors in publicly traded companies.
“This proposed rule would effectively force publicly traded companies to require small, independent, family farms to report on-farm data regarding individual operations and day-to-day activities, hindering the ability of American farmers and ranchers to compete in global markets and creating onerous compliance requirements for operations with few or no employees,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA-04), a bill sponsor, in a statement.
