California’s Proposition 12: NPPC, AFBF Seek to Strike as Invalid
The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) and the American Farm Bureau Federation jointly filed their opening brief on Sept. 23 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, asking the court to strike California’s Proposition 12 as invalid.
Proposition 12 forces arbitrary animal housing standards that reach outside of California's borders to farms across the U.S., NPPC said in Capital Update. By attempting to regulate businesses outside of its borders, California's Proposition 12 violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“Proposition 12 imposes California’s preferred animal husbandry methods—sow housing requirements that almost no farmer in the U.S. uses (for good reason)—on the producers of all these out-of-state raised pigs,” the brief said.
Starting Jan. 1, 2022, Proposition 12 will prohibit the sale of pork not produced according to California's production standards. The proposition also applies to any uncooked pork sold in the state, whether raised there or outside its borders.
According to the brief, Proposition 12 “imposes an enormous and costly burden on interstate commercial transactions, requiring wholesale rebuilding of tens of thousands of sow farm facilities and massive operational changes in how farmers care for their sows.”
Additionally, “it achieves no consumer-health benefit at all—though that was touted to voters as one of its goals—and far exceeds any right of California to determine what its own citizens eat by regulating as a practical matter how pork is produced nationwide.”
California produces hardly any pork, but California residents consume 13% of all pork eaten in the U.S. Because of this, California imports huge quantities of pork raised in other states.
NPPC said less than 1% of U.S. pork production meets Proposition 12's requirements. To comply with Proposition 12, U.S. hog farmers need to start making investment decisions immediately to be ready by the implementation date.
To read the full opening brief, click here.
Read more from Farm Journal's PORK:
Proposition 12 Reaches Beyond Livestock Industry Into Your Pocketbook
How Will California’s Prop 12 Affect the Pork Industry?
Pork Industry, Don’t Underestimate Proposition 12
California’s Proposition 12: NPPC, AFBF File Legal Challenge