A month after the Supreme Court upheld a voter-approved California law that bans the sale of pork produced anywhere from breeding pigs held in small cages, the state has agreed to delay enforcement until next year.
Proposition 12 was approved by more than 62% of the state’s voters in 2018, but it has been on hold during legal challenges by the pork industry, which contended it would interfere with interstate commerce while driving up prices nationwide. On May 11, the court ruled 5-4 that California was entitled to protect its residents from practices it considers inhumane, and would not be unduly disrupting nationwide commerce.
A Sacramento County judge’s order blocking enforcement of Prop. 12 had been scheduled to expire July 1. But last week lawyers for the state Department of Food and Agriculture and grocers and restaurant owners who had sought the postponement signed an amended order postponing implementation until Jan. 1.
The state agency “understands there will necessarily be a period of transition,” the court filing said. It said the department did not intend to focus its “limited resources” on immediately removing noncompliant pork from stores and restaurants that had already acquired it, or from the supply chain, but instead would spend the upcoming months informing producers and sellers of their obligations under the law.
Prop. 12, sponsored by the Humane Society and other animal-protection groups, requires producers of breeding pigs to house them in cages of at least 24 square feet, allowing them enough room to turn around. It also set standards for cages that hold egg-laying hens and veal calves, and banned the sale in California of meat – including pork, produced almost entirely in other states — from animals held in cages that violated those standards.
The National Pork Producers Council, which led the lawsuit against Prop. 12, welcomed the postponement Wednesday and indicated it has not abandoned its challenge to the measure.
“Granting six months of additional relief for products in the supply chain allows grocery stores to remain stocked so the 40 million Californians have uninterrupted access to affordable, safe and nutritious pork products, especially with rising food prices,” the organization’s chief executive officer, Bryan Humphreys, said in a statement. “While this temporary solution does not solve the challenges and uncertainty California Proposition 12 brings to our industry, NPPC looks forward to working with Congress to find a permanent solution to this problem.”
Last week Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, announced re-introduction of a bill that farming groups have titled the Exposing Agricultural Trade Suppression Act, or EATS. It would prohibit any state from imposing standards on farm products from other states if the standards were stricter than those set by the federal government or the states where the products were produced.
“This bill would end California’s war on breakfast,” Grassley declared on Twitter. Similar legislation was proposed by several House Republicans in 2021 but got nowhere, and the prospects of passage would appear to be slim in the Democratic-majority Senate.
Reach Bob Egelko: begelko@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @BobEgelko
