There will be chaos in the U.S. meat marketplace without congressional action on California’s Prop 12 law that tightened animal welfare requirements for pork products sold in the state, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Proposition 12, which requires pig confinements to be large enough for animals to turn around, was passed by ballot initiative in 2018 and was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023.
The U.S. pork industry has said the law burdens pork producers and would not improve animal welfare. It has called on Congress to repeal Prop 12 through federal action.
Read Also
U.S. grains: Corn sets contract lows on expectations for big US crop
Chicago Board of Trade corn futures set contract lows and soybean futures sagged on Friday on expectations that beneficial weather for U.S. crops will lead to bumper harvests, analysts said.
The Canadian hog sector has expressed concerns that–as Canadian swine housing standards may not meet the letter of Proposition 12–it and similar laws will have negative effects on Canadian producers. Canadian producers export millions of pigs to the U.S. each year.
The Biden administration had supported the industry’s position before the Supreme Court.
“If we don’t take this issue seriously, we’re going to have chaos in the marketplace,” Vilsack said.
“When each state has the ability to define for itself and its consumers exactly what farming techniques or practices are appropriate, it does create the possibility of 50 different sets of rules and regulations,” he said.
Prop 12 was fully implemented as of Jan. 1, 2024.
Economic effects muted
Earlier this year, agriculture economist Dan Sumner from the University of California Davis agreed with Vilsack’s assessment that state-specific regulations could complicate the sector.
“It becomes a real mess and then it starts to really have national implications or North American implications,” Sumner told a Jan. 10 agricultural outlook webinar organized by the North American Agricultural Journalists.
However, he suggested Proposition 12 would have minimal economic impact on the North American hog sector.
“California consumers like me are going to pay, I don’t know, five or 10 per cent more for pork that’s covered by the policy, which means a pork chop, but not a cooked ham or lunch meat or sausages,” Sumner said.
“This covers about eight per cent of the sows in North America. The baby pigs that come from those sows that comply are going to cost more. And then I, as a California consumer, will pay.”
“The other 92 per cent of the sows [or] the farms that raise those sows really won’t notice much,” he added.
–with files from the Glacier FarmMedia network.
