The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Proposition 12 was one of the most anticipated agricultural rulings in recent memory, and after both right- and left-leaning justices sided with California and dealt a blow to states rights, several U.S. lawmakers have begun work to undercut Prop 12 at the federal level.
Prop 12 was originally approved in California in 2018. It bans the sale of pork, veal, and eggs in California from livestock that wasn’t raised according to the state’s production standards, no matter which state in the U.S. the animals were actually raised in. Challenges were brought by several agricultural organizations, including the National Pork Producers Council, noting how the legislation would wrongly impact interstate commerce and impede national markets.
SCOTUS announced its decision rejecting those challenges on May 11.
In the past month, both the U.S. House and Senate have introduced bills that would “prevent states and local jurisdictions from interfering with the production and distribution of agricultural products in interstate commerce, and for other purposes.” All co-sponsors are Republicans, and many come from agricultural-heavy states, like Texas, Illinois, Nebraska, and North Carolina.
While the specific text of the bills have not yet been made public, activist organizations are already planting the seeds of their rebuttal. Due in part to major pork producer Smithfield Foods being owned by a Chinese company, despite having its headquarters in Virginia, groups such as Animal Wellness Action are calling this legislation “a thinly veiled maneuver by a foreign-influenced industry to overturn American elections.”
“It is an outrageous thought for Congress to nullify ballot measures that are expressions of popular will. In this case, it’s even more glaring and galling than that. It’s the pork industry trade association, with a Des Moines address but with the support of the Chinese government, seeking to undo American elections,” said Animal Wellness Action’s Wayne Pacelle, referencing the National Pork Producers Council’s offices in Des Moines, Iowa. (Pacelle was formerly the CEO of the Humane Society of the United States until he resigned amid scandal.)
The Senate version of the bill is titled “Ending Agriculture Trade Suppression” and was introduced by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS).
According to Food Safety News, Marshall said soon after he announced his bill, “The United States is constantly faced with non-tariff trade barriers from protectionist countries, hurting American agriculture access to new markets. The last thing we need is a big state like California imposing its will on ag-heavy states like Kansas with regulations that will restrict our ability to trade among states. …
“If California wants to regulate agriculture in its own state, that’s fine, but California’s rules should not apply to Kansas, whose legislature never approved of these regulations,” Marshall added.
Proposition 12 was slated to go into effect July 1, but California adjusted the timeline to extend the start date by six months.
