Pork and egg producers across the country will be watching Wednesday as the House Agriculture Committee holds a hearing on California’s Proposition 12. California voters passed Prop 12 in 2018 essentially banning the sale of conventionally raised pork and eggs in the state, forcing producers from coast to coast to modify their operations at considerable expense. Will Coggin, Research Director with the Center for Environment and Welfare, a Washington think tank, says other states could follow California’s lead.
“Voters were very misled by the animal rights activists who funded this measure. They spent over 10 million bucks passing it and well, what about other states? You know, California is not the only state that has this ballot referendum, and so they all of a sudden, you could see measures of two dozen states, each attacking, let’s say, eggs or pork or dairy or beef or poultry run by these animal rights activists that really create chaos in the marketplace for both producers and consumers.”
Coggin says voters were misled by the ballot measure in 2018.
“They didn’t realize how much of the drive up prices for their bacon, their eggs at the grocery store by banning conventionally produced products, and so with bird flu also creating havoc on the egg prices. Eggs got up to over 10 bucks a dozen in California. And so we did some polling in May, and we found that Californians have voters’ remorse. They have buyer’s remorse about Prop 12. 60% of Californians say they want a legislative six to Prop 12. And we also asked, Hey, if this Prop 12 was on the ballot again tomorrow, would you vote for it? Only 35% of people said yes. So it would fail if it was on the ballot again tomorrow.”
Producers, as well as California voters, have been waiting for Congress to take up the issue.
“They’ve been talking about passing a slimmed down farm bill by the end of September that would address things like prop 12 and a few other issues that were not addressed in the spending bill. And so we’re hopeful that the members of Congress understand that prop 12 is very damaging. It’s both the producers and consumers. Californians dislike like it. They regret passing it, and these measures could, if they’re not stopped by Congress, could create even more chaos for farmers down the road as well as consumers.”