SCOTUS on Prop 12
I’m Bob Larson. The Supreme Court may decide early in the new year whether to hear a challenge to California’s restrictions on meat from caged livestock raised in the Midwest and other states.Livestock producers will be watching closely to see if the high court accepts a challenge to California’s Proposition 12 law imposing strict sow, hen, and veal calf housing rules for meat sold into the state.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, from the nation's biggest pork-producing state, hopes the court takes the case …
GRASSLEY … “Californians are trying to use their state’s massive economic power to impose regulations on pig farmers nationwide. Other states do not tell California how to grow grapes or almonds.”
So, Grassley says his state’s pork producers would appreciate getting the same consideration on raising pigs.
But the bigger question is whether the Supreme Court will take up the case …
GRASSLEY … “The Supreme Court hears a very small percentage of appeals each year, and I hope the justices will see California’s misuse of its commercial power as interfering with interstate commerce, as exactly the kind of activity that the Framers intended to prevent.”
Grassley’s also sponsoring the Exposing Agricultural Trade
Suppression Act to prohibit state and local governments from interfering with ag production in other states.