Nobody wins with a patchwork of differing and ever-changing state sow housing laws spurred by California Proposition 12. It doesn’t matter if you are a large-scale farmer or a small-scale farmer, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) says everyone stands to lose.
“The issue goes well beyond animal welfare and safety — farmers’ top priority — and rather to the root of the Constitution’s interstate commerce regulations and how bending them can break a farmer,” NPPC said in a release.
Ohio pig farmer and National Pork Producers Council vice president Pat Hord spoke on the need for patchwork prevention in testimony before the House Agriculture Committee in July. Hord has chosen to retrofit barns to be Prop 12-compliant.
“Pork producers throughout the country have already collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars converting existing structures or building new barns to continue selling pork in California,” Hord testified.
But he says his compliance with Prop 12 does not protect him from more financial burdens if patchwork laws are not addressed.
“Whatever I do today could need to be changed when a new state decides they want a different housing standard,” he said. “These are expensive changes, and some farmers may exit the business amid this uncertainty, which increases consolidation.”
The Practical Effect of Prop 12
NPPC recently submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the National Economic Council in response to a request from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy on the adverse effects of extraterritoriality, which is the legal concept that a state’s laws can apply to people or actions outside its borders.
“Extraterritoriality was specifically addressed by our country’s founders in the U.S. Constitution: A state law that has the practical effect of regulating wholly out-of-state commerce is invalid, regardless of whether it also regulates in-state commerce,” NPPC explained. “California imposed housing restrictions on its few pig farmers well before it passed Prop 12, meaning Prop 12 wholly regulates out-of-state pork production.”
For perspective, NPPC explains 99.9% of America’s sows are raised outside California, despite the state’s large appetite for the power protein.
“In other words, the practical effect of Prop 12 is that commercial pork activity outside of California must comply with that state’s regulations, making the initiative an extraterritorial regulation of the $27 billion interstate pork market — and driving up costs for farmers and prices for consumers,” NPPC said.
A Costly Precedent
Prop 12 has set a costly precedent for other states to pass similar but conflicting laws, imposing substantial burdens on the nation’s pig farmers in their wake, NPPC said. Farmers must either continue to comply with the various state laws or lose business in critical markets.
That’s why NPPC president Duane Stateler, a fellow pig farmer from Ohio, complied with the Ohio standard for pork housing. He understands what having to then comply with another state, and potentially others, means.
“What if you built a brand-new house — one you and your family had saved for, waited for and are proud and excited about — and you followed all the regulations to ensure it was built to code,” Stateler explains. “Then, six months later, a state outside your own says your electrical work is unacceptable and you need to fix it for your family to be able to stay in your home. And then, 10 months later, another state comes back and says you need to redo your driveway to adhere to their egress laws — and your HVAC is not, in their eyes, energy efficient enough? This is what pig farmers face every time a state passes an arbitrary law and we have to rebuild our barns or lose business into those states.”
NPPC urges U.S. decisionmakers to remember that real pig farmers across the country and all farms — small, large, Prop 12-compliant or not — lose when conflicting state regulations keep them jumping through regulatory hoops without cause.
“The Supreme Court was clear that the ball is in Congress’ court, and we need their help in keeping these farms in business and pork prices reasonable for consumers,” NPPC said.
