From $6 gas to extreme pandemic restrictions, most Americans are relieved they don't reside in California.
But a controversial new California law might affect all Americans, whether they live in California or not. And it hits where it hurts: Our love for bacon.
It’s all set up for a showdown this fall in the Supreme Court, which recently agreed to hear a challenge to the law.
At issue is a ballot measure, Proposition 12, passed by California voters in 2018. The law attempts to regulate how farmers in Iowa, North Carolina, and other states produce pork by prohibiting them from selling in California unless they meet costly state mandates.
Complying with the law will cost billions of dollars — costs that will be passed on to all American consumers. For Californians, it’s even worse: They face bacon shortages if the law goes into effect. Why? Because only around 4 percent of pork production is currently compliant with Prop 12. (Thankfully, a lower court put the law on hold earlier this year.)
How did we get here?
Proposition 12 bans pork from farms that use a popular form of animal husbandry, maternity pens, which activists claim is inhumane. Proponents told California voters the proposal was a way to improve the lives of pigs. But what voters didn’t know was that farmers and veterinarians believe maternity pens are the best way to house sows.
Individual maternity pens are enclosures that keep sows safe while they are pregnant. When housed in groups, sows fight each other for food and dominance.
Maternity pens are used by 96 percent of the country’s pork producers, meaning just 4 percent of the nation's pork supply can be sold in California under the new law. Studies have shown the price of bacon is expected to jump by as much as 60 percent in California as a direct result of Proposition 12. Shortages are expected.
The problem is that Proposition 12 targets all farmers nationwide. According to the Washington Post, California accounts for 15 percent of nationwide pork consumption but there are very few pork farmers in the state. Accordingly, California is flexing its muscle over an issue that plays out far beyond its borders with no legitimate state interest to justify this intrusion and restraint on interstate commerce.
If producers in Iowa or Minnesota want to be able to sell products in California, they have to build entirely new barns — at the cost of billions of dollars — to reach those consumers, driving up the costs for all Americans.
Imagine if you built a brand-new house, only for the government to demand after a few years you tear it down and build a new one. It’s like that — on a bigger scale.
One group of pig farmers told the court in a lawsuit against Proposition 12, “It requires massive and costly alteration to existing sow housing nationwide, necessitates either reduction of herd sizes or building of new facilities to meet its space mandates, raises prices in transactions with no California connection, drives farms out of business, and promotes industry consolidation, and will be policed by intrusive inspections of out-of-state farms conducted by California’s agents.”
The funders of Prop 12 are vegans — meaning they oppose pork even if the animals stayed in a Ritz Carlton. They are essentially using California’s ballot measure system to throw a wrench into pork production nationwide.
This is where the Supreme Court can bring home the bacon.
Proposition 12 is an overreach by the state of California. Californians can certainly pass a ballot measure to regulate pork production within California — perhaps even regulate it out of existence.
But California’s authority is supposed to stop at its borders. Typically, states are not allowed to interfere with interstate commerce except in rare cases such as when there’s a public safety concern. But there are no issues of food safety here at all.
Moreover, no consumers or pork farmers in Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, or the 46 other states were allowed to vote on Prop 12.
California recently lost population for the first time, as people vote with their feet. If California can pass laws that reach everywhere, that undermines our federal system.
The Supreme Court needs to see it that way, too, and protect all Americans from California’s hog-wild policies.
Will Coggin is the managing director of the Center for Consumer Freedom.