Other aspects of the California law - governing the treatment of egg-laying chickens and cattle raised for veal - could be enforced.
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If the Supreme Court finds California’s law unconstitutional, it couldn’t be fully implemented and the nation’s pork producers would be free to continue their current operations, including the use of so-called gestation crates that protect sows from other pigs but prevent them from turning around. The National Pork Producers Council and American Farm Bureau Federation argue that California’s law violates the Constitution’s commerce clause because it throws a wrench in the nation’s pork system and requires out-of-state producers to incur nearly all the costs of compliance.Īfter losing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the national associations asked the U.S. California’s regulations would ban pork sales in the state unless the pigs were born to sows with at least 24-square-feet of space and an ability to turn around. Constitution by interfering with a national system in which about 65,000 farmers raise 125 million hogs annually, resulting in gross sales of $26 billion. If you see something and you’re progressive and you work toward it and you believe in it, I think if a measure like this does pass, you should be rewarded for it.”īrandt is among hundreds of relatively small farmers who are caught between the state of California and the Iowa-based National Pork Producers Council, which represents the nation’s largest pig operations, based primarily in the Midwest and North Carolina.Īt issue is whether California’s Proposition 12 violates the U.S. “It absolutely would help,” said Brandt, who maintains a herd of about 1,500 sows at his farm near Versailles, Ohio. Given all the delays, Brandt wonders if he will ever see the surge in demand he expected when the measure was overwhelmingly approved by California voters in 2018. Supreme Court will soon hear a case brought by a national pork industry group that opposes the regulations. California has yet to fully write and approve the necessary regulations, a state judge has blocked enforcement of the law because of that regulatory delay, and the U.S.
Yet, for reasons out of Brandt’s control, it hasn’t happened. With that measure, Brandt and farmers like him would suddenly be the only sources of bacon and pork chops for a state of 39 million people that consumes about 13% of the nation’s pork supply. That payoff seemed likely to grow even larger after the January 2022 implementation of a California ballot measure that required all pork sold in the state to abide by the standards Brandt had already implemented but that are rarely seen in large hog farms. DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Ohio hog farmer Joe Brandt changed his operation a few years ago to give his pigs more room and keep pregnant sows out of the narrow crates used by most farms.īrandt said he wanted to treat his pigs more humanely, but in doing so he also created a niche for his family business amid heightened concerns about the treatment of animals, and that enabled him to charge higher prices for the pigs.
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