U.S. Supreme Court to hear challenge to California pig law

March 29, 2022

By KAREN VELIE

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it will consider a challenge to California’s Proposition 12, a law that requires each pig to have 24 square feet of space. Ranchers, retailers and restaurant owners have voiced concerns that the currently paused law will double or triple the price of pork.

The law also bans the sale of pork products from other states, where most pork consumed in California originates, if the rancher does not abide by Proposition 12’s space requirements.

The National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation petitioning the Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of one state imposing excessively burdensome regulations on other states.

“California consumes 13% of U.S. pork, but produces only 0.1% of what it consumes,” according to the petition. “Proposition 12’s sow-housing requirements thus fall almost exclusively on farmers outside of its borders. The Ninth Circuit accurately described petitioners’ allegations about how those requirements operate extraterritorially to disrupt the $26-billion-a-year market in pork, force California’s preferred production methods on farmers everywhere, and impose the high costs of those methods on out-of-state farmers and consumers…”

The Supreme Court could hear oral arguments in the fall and render a decision by the end of the year.


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Pigs, and all farm animals should have an easy, misery free life that ends with just ONE bad day.


Pork is a luxury for the dear leader and his environmentally ethical and moral 1%. Why make things more affordable for the lower classes when you can do the reverse? This is just driving up demand for out of state pork, and then when the regulations go national, and we turn to foreign pork. It’s ok just as long as the grim reality behind our meat production is beyond our control and done far away by someone else we feel we are not responsibility for. But we’ll still buy it and pretend our regulations made us good people and leaders in the future of humanity.


Nothing wrong with treating animals like fellow living beings rather than machines. I would also suspect that animals kept in humane conditions would be healthier for human consumption. That’s also how certain global reset folks would like to treat US-stacked in miserable over crowded conditions for their convenience.


We should treat everything as inhumanely as possible, prior to consuming their flesh. It makes the meat more tender.


What about Turkey bacon? Are the nuts in the state and PETA going to require 24 square feet for each delicious turkey? That would put the price of turkey bacon up there with piggies. You turkey’s ought to be offended.


That bacon is not crispy enough…..


Nothing like people born and raised in big cities, to tell farmers and ranchers how to grow food and raise animals, because everyone knows that ONLY politicians know what’s good for you.


Reminds me, of some pigs being more equal than others…


Rural Farmers tend to treat their animals humanely from my experience. They care for their animals when needed, and worry about having to “put them out of their misery” if gravely ill.

Industrial farms are another thing altogether. A pen 6×4 isn’t a lot to ask for a 200 lbs animal.

This bill actually strengthens the family farmer in the marketplace.


The world needs less middle manager job justification and more ditch digging in a big way right now –


Can’t afford beef anymore now that chickens require their own studio apartment before slaughter, so that’s becoming too costly. Now they’re concerned about pig space and making that unaffordable? WTH is wrong with these legislators? Is there industry left they can destroy to just put us into a depression? The insanity is on “high” here. It’s really clear that they have lost all touch with reality. They’re living in a bubble and have all become dictators.


That retirement date can’t come soon enough!


Yes. That essential nutrient we all need for a healthy body. Bacon.

I don’t even care about the pigs. But I don’t want to eat them.