Farm animals used in federal experiments to help the meat industry would receive new protections against mistreatment and neglect under legislation introduced on Thursday by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both houses of Congress.

The bill aims to extend the federal Animal Welfare Act to shield cows, pigs, sheep and other animals used for agricultural research at federal facilities, including the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Neb., a unit of the Department of Agriculture. The act, which became law in 1966, excluded those animals, focusing largely on cats and dogs used in laboratory research.

Sponsors of the new legislation, called the Aware Act, said they were prompted by a Jan. 19 article in The New York Times that raised concerns about the treatment of farm animals at the center, a 50-year-old institution that uses breeding and surgical techniques to make the animals bigger, leaner, more prolific and more profitable. Interviews and internal records showed that experiments and everyday handling there have often subjected animals to illness, pain and premature death, and that the center lacked the oversight that many universities and companies have adopted for their research on animals.

“As stewards of taxpayer dollars, we felt a responsibility to present a legislative fix that holds the U.S.D.A. to the same humane standards that countless research facilities across the country are held to,” said Representative Mike Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, who sponsored the House version of the bill with Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat. The Senate sponsors include Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who wrote on Twitter last month that the article in The Times “speaks to a level of cruelty to animals that is unacceptable.” The bill has been endorsed by the Humane Society of the United States and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.