All stand to lose when faced with a patchwork of differing state sow housing laws spurred by California Proposition 12, says the National Pork Producers Council.
In testimony before the House Agriculture Committee this summer, Ohio pig farmer and NPPC Vice President Pat Hord spoke to the need for patchwork prevention, even for those, like him, who have 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,” he testified.
That compliance does not future-proof farmers 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,” Hord explained. “These are expensive changes, and some farmers may exit the business amid this uncertainty, which increases consolidation.”
NPPC recently submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Justice on the adverse effects of extraterritoriality. This is the legal concept that a state’s laws can apply to people or actions outside its borders.
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, 99.9 percent of America’s sows are raised outside California. In other words, the practical effect of Prop. 12 is that commercial pork activity outside of California must comply with that state’s regulations. This makes the initiative an extraterritorial regulation of the $27 billion interstate pork market. It’s driving up costs for farmers and prices for consumers, NPPC says.
NPPC President Duane Stateler, a fellow pig farmer from Ohio, complied with the Ohio standard for pork housing and knows personally what having to then comply with another state, and potentially others, means. Stateler draws an analogy:
“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. 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 in those states.”
Save Our Bacon
A new bill is circulating in Congress called the Save Our Bacon Act. The Save Our Bacon Act aims to restore interstate commerce as the latest response to Proposition 12. Morgan Worek, program and marketing director at the Wisconsin Pork Association, shares with Kiley Allan what the bill would mean for the pork industry:
