Deciphering the Gray Areas of Proposition 12
No one denies there’s a lot of “gray” to interpret when it comes to California’s Proposition 12 regulations.
“We are reading the tea leaves as a certifier trying to understand the program as it unfolds,” Rachel Burke, director of certification for EarthClaims, said during the Gestal Swine Summit.
Although no certifiers have been accredited yet for California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) Proposition 12 certification, they have laid out some guidelines in the proposed rule, she said.
She believes companies that have a background in animal welfare certification and that are able to evaluate with a good degree of certainty and a robust internal procedure that farms are able to comply with these standards will be able to be accredited.
What Does Certification Entail?
Burke said certification typically involves a once-a-year, on-site visit. The two main elements that Proposition 12 legislation will ask certifiers to address are minimum square footage requirement for sows and an audit trail requirement.
“Producers will need to have an onsite annual inspection of facilities in order for CDFA to determine they are compliant or in process of becoming compliant It also looks like there will be requirements all the way down the chain – from distributor of that product to end retailer – to provide documentation that their pork product came form a California Prop 12-certified operation,” Burke said.
CDFA will handle much of the certification, she said. But given the fact that this rule is going to impact producers all throughout North America and possibly beyond, she anticipates CDFA will engage the services of other third-party certifiers at some point.
Tough Questions
Burke weighed in on a variety of topics from hospital sows to regrouping events during the webinar. Here are a few of her key points on some of the gray areas the industry is deciphering.
1. Temporary Restraint
Some farms are using free access stalls and similar type of setups. These are not restricted by the standard as currently written. Burke notes that it’s an area she believes will be heavily scrutinized by auditors, however, because of the rule that states a sow must not be constrained in a stall more than a maximum six hours per day, or 24 hours in a 30-day period.
“Auditors are going to be, of course, only visiting the farm likely once a year. They're only going to have a short window into what the typical production or management on this operation is. They will ask a lot of questions about management practices, and how often those stalls are kept open, and will rely pretty heavily on records, too,” she said.
2. Hospital Sows
In the exemptions, it states that animals undergoing individual treatment are exempt from Prop 12. But, what classifies as individual treatment? Obviously, administering medication or medical treatment to a sow classifies as individual treatment. But what about animals that are thin?
“I think that's a really interesting question,” Burke said. “The approach we typically take in animal welfare certification, which I would probably apply to this situation as well, is that our auditors are going to be evaluating which sows are in hospital treatment pens, and why they're there. We'd be looking at treatment records, evaluating their intervention plans and getting a sense of the percentage of sows in hospital pens and for what reasons and whether or not that looks like something that's a little bit outside the percentage norm for this kind of a production setup.”
She said certifiers will want to see that sows are not just being housed in these hospital pens, but that they have a plan for reintroduction and are making progress on that plan.
3. Biological Variation
One of the challenges producers are facing when redesigning their barns to be Prop 12 compliant is how to account for biological variation. Burke agreed that this is a tricky situation for standard setters.
“Again, EarthClaims is not the standard setter here. It's challenging to write standards around stocking density because what we know here is that we are not raising widgets. We're raising live animals with variations in terms of their conception rates, and many other factors including size and you name it,” she said. “If I were the standard setter, I would probably lean towards finding a way to add in an allowable percentage variation into that stocking density.”
Although allowing for a percentage variation would be optimal, she said the way the rule is currently written, it's a strict play for square feet with no allowance for averaging or for any percentage variation.
“I think it's going to be relatively straightforward, 24 square feet per animal. I'm not sure that we can, as a certifier, without additional guidance from CDFA make any judgment on averaging out that population,” Burke added.
At the end of the day, Burke said it's important for the industry trying to become compliant to understand those gray areas in order to interpret the rules effectively.
Listen to the full webinar and panel discussion with Dave Wade of Hanor, Rick Thomas of Ag Property Solutions, and Dirk Hesse, an independent pork industry consultant from Germany.
Learn more about the Summit.
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