National Pork Producers Working Through Proposition 12 Transition

In November of 2018, California voters passed Proposition 12, which imposes minimum requirements on farmers to provide more space for breeding sows.

In December of 2018, The National Pork Producers Council, along with the American Farm Bureau Federation filed a legal challenge asking the court to strike it as invalid under the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution. President of the National Pork Producers Council, Scott Hayes says they are disappointed in the Supreme Court's ruling to uphold Proposition 12 and the organization will now need to mitigate this law. And he says they will do so by working with the state of California.

“The best plan of action was to work with the state of California to make a smooth transition. I'm sure you realize the pain out here in the industry of producers right now economically, our input costs exceeded our income by quite a bit this spring and it's continuing into this summer. So you know, the last thing we needed was disruption in the supply of pork moving through the system.”

He explains the compliance transition.

“Any product that's processed after July one for sale in California needs to be popped 12 compliant, but product that was processed prior to that can be sold up until December 31. Then after that, all products will need to be compliant with a Prop 12.”

Thus, he says NPPC will continue to work on compliance education.