Supreme Decisions

As a vendor at farmers markets in the DC region, over the year customers occasionally show up in the pages of the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. I make a mental note to discuss something relevant to their status, sometimes catching them off guard as if a farmer shouldn’t be reading such lofty materials. Similarly, email addresses from pandemic online pre-ordering offered a glimpse into who my customers were with their .edu, .gov, and even a few .mil extensions. But nothing outed the attorneys last week at market more than their suggestion to follow the Supreme Court this week as they argue the case of the National Pork Producers Council v. Ross which asks whether California is permitted to enact an animal cruelty law that, at least according to many of the nation’s pork farmers, could fundamentally change how pork is produced in all 50 states.

Their question for me, “How could this affect you?”

My immediate answer was that it would not affect me, but it is always that knee-jerk response that eventually comes back to bite so I’ve been turning over the outcome of legislated animal welfare in the industrial food system as I’ve followed the news. The case is a result of The National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation appeal of a lower court's decision to throw out their lawsuit seeking to invalidate a 2018 ballot initiative passed by voters barring sales in California of pork, veal, and eggs from animals whose confinement failed to meet minimum space requirements.

“Is livestock raised on pasture?”

“Do you use antibiotics or synthetic hormones?”

“Are your feedstocks produced using GMOs or chemicals?”

As the rise in demand for sustainably produced food has increased commodity producers have jumped on the bandwagon marketing their products as such to appeal to shoppers in retail chains. They have altered their production practices just enough to squeak by on their marketing claims—Certified Organic being the big one. Did you know that the national organic standards are the same whether the farmer has a ten or ten thousand pigs?

Commodity protein production is B I G business with the pork industry alone generating $38 billion annual. That’s a lot of cheap bacon. California imports 99% of their pork, the majority being produced in Iowa, North Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, and Minnesota. However, Proposition 12 prohibited the sale of pork in California if pigs are raised in breeding pens that don’t allow sows to turn a full circle. Even the National Pork Producers Council admitted practically all commercially bred sows are housed in a way that they would not be in compliance with Prop 12.

While the lofty arguments have fallen into the category of setting precedent for discriminatory actions against goods from other states that might segue into all out commerce and potentially morality wars between states, I tend to drill down into the nitty gritty of how it ultimately affects my fellow farmers.

First, none of the farmers at the markets fall into the commodity producers category. We already raise our livestock using methods that would, in fact, be in accordance with California’s Prop 12. Our pigs and poultry do not live in overcrowded indoor facilities, stuffed with antibiotics and GMO feeds, and prophylactically mutilated (i.e. debeaked, tails docked) to prevent cannibalism. We are not indentured servants to large corporations who retain ownership of the feedstuffs and livestock leaving only the labor, risks, costs, and manure for the farmers.

Taking the long view to California’s Prop 12 being upheld, I would expect the proliferation of better farming practices that spawn new farmers. Business models utilizing sustainable, humane, and regenerative livestock production have already gained market share in the highly competitive retail space. Even fast food chains such as Chipotle and McDonald’s have set animal welfare and production standards that would meet Prop 12 criteria.

Getting animals out of crowded barns and back on green grass reduces the need for expensive manure handling equipment, much that operates off diesel fuel. Less crowded conditions means less fighting and disease thus reducing the need for antibiotics. Does anyone remember the campaign to reduce the use of antibiotics in protein production where posters of pigs and chickens were plastered all over Metro Stations with warnings about antibiotic resistance? With livestock out of the barns, there is no longer the need to heat or cool them which requires an incredible amount of energy usually in the form of propane and electricity. 

As much as these arguments bring about the issues of humane livestock husbandry, intrastate commerce, and constitutional law, it basically boils down to the fact that commodity producers aren’t willing to shoulder the costs, estimated at $13 per pig, to increase the space for each pig to 24 square feet. To put it in perspective, that’s basically four pigs per single sized market tent, a 10’x10’ structure. The current acceptable space requirements are 8 square feet per pig, or 12 pigs per market tent space. Industry pundits claim these changes could result in the cost of bacon rising as much as 10%. To put that in perspective, that would be less than fifty cents on a pound of bacon at Walmart.

Despite all I’ve read in the commentaries, nothing has noted the psychological impact better animal welfare standards have on the farmers themselves. For the last 22 years I have lived in rural Pennsylvania farming communities where many of my neighbors are the exact same producers California’s Prop 12 aims to change. They are demoralized, frustrated, and for lack of a better word, hamstrung by the industrial food complex that dictates practically every aspect of their business. One, a third generation pig farmer who had bought into concentrated animal feeding stood at my fence in tears as he watched a group of young pigs rolling a watermelon like a soccer ball. “I sure miss having happy pigs,” he told me.

Instead of falling down the rabbit hole of what ifs, like the speculation that voting in favor of Prop 12 could eventually lead to states prohibiting the sale of goods produced by unvaccinated workers, I suggest the Justices step down from their bench and take a trip out to farm country. They should walk through a noncompliant Prop 12 hog barn before handing down their decision.