News

AFBF wants lower court ruling on egg bill reversed

The American Farm Bureau Federation filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the US Court of Appeals to urge the court to find that six states have standing to challenge California’s egg law.

Ellen Steen, general counsel for AFBF says the legislation that is being challenged was enacted to protect California egg producers from being at a competitive disadvantage resulting from the 2008 Proposition 2 ballot initiative that imposed cage size restrictions on California egg producers.  “They face the difficult choice now of either not selling eggs in California, which is an enormous market,” she says.  “Or with complying with California’s cage standard, which impose enormous cost (to upgrade their systems) to many producers.”

She tells Brownfield AFBF feels the law is detrimental to the nation’s egg and unconstitutional.

The goal of the brief, she says, is to reverse the lower court’s ruling that barred those other states from bringing suit against California on behalf of their citizens.