The National Pork Producers Council is encouraging farmers to highlight October 11th, the day the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the constitutional challenge of California's Proposition 12.
California's Proposition 12 and the Supreme Court case opposing it was the focus yesterday of a media roundtable hosted by the National Pork Producers Council. October 11th the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case, filed by the NPPC and the National Farm Bureau Federation, which questions the constitutionality of the California law.
NPPC Legal Strategist Michael Formica, says the law was passed with the intention to regulate farmers who are located far outside of California.
Clip-Michael Formica-National Pork Producers Council:
We had filed this challenge to Proposition 12, a ballot initiative that California voters passed in 2018, nearly three and a half years ago. Our feeling then and continues today is that, if any law is unconstitutional and violates the dormant commerce clause of the U.S. constitution, Proposition 12 is unconstitutional.
It reaches thousands of miles outside the of state of California, imposes very prescriptive standards on farmers who have no contact with the state of California. It will force them to incur millions of dollars in renovations to their farms, to have to host inspectors from the state of California to their farms and at the same time, while being in the name of improving animal welfare, ironically, they'll significantly decrease the welfare and the health and the safety of those animals in the fare of these farmers.
It is incredibly disruptive to the industry and will be very disruptive to the supply chain.
Formica notes according to USDA there are only about eight thousand sows in California which is simply insufficient to feed a state of 40 million people and most of them are show pigs, so the biggest impact will be on farmers who are located far outside of California.
Source : Farmscape.ca