New California Law May Impact Lowa Hog Farmers

Jan 05, 2022

A new California law could hurt hog farmers in Iowa.

The law bans the use of gestation stalls and creates larger minimum pen size requirements for hogs, chickens, and veal calves.

Gestation stalls are a smaller type of pen that don’t allow a sow to turn around after giving birth and keeps the sow by itself.

The ban means pork producers who use these pens cannot sell to California.

Iowa farmer Dave Struthers said the pens are designed for protection.

“It protects the piglets from getting laid on because the sow can’t turn around and do a lot of things to crush them and hurt them,” Struthers said. “They can have individualized care.”

The Humane Society of the U.S. led the ballot initiative which passed the law in 2018 with almost 63 percent of the vote.

Businesses who don’t comply with the law and use meat which does not meet the requirement can face a fine up to a thousand dollars and jail time for up to 180 days.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.