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Cage-free suit prompts Prop 12 questions

A National Ag Law Center attorney says she’s closely flowing how the Department of Justice’s challenge to California’s egg laws could impact animal housing regulations across the country.

Elizabeth Rumley tells Brownfield several states have some form of cage-free requirements.

“While we have 14 or 15 states that have these types of laws in place, dealing with the raising of animals within their state boundaries, I think we’re at eight or nine that have these requirements in place for the sale of eggs within their state, no matter where they are produced,” she explains.

Plaintiffs argue California’s laws oppose the Egg Products Inspection Act and point to Proposition 12’s cage-free standards as a violation of the Supremacy Clause.

Rumley says the Supreme Court has previously ruled that Proposition 12 is constitutional under the Dormant Commerce Clause, and this challenge takes a different approach.

“They are trying to tie the production of living conditions, production of eggs under specific living conditions, they are trying to tie that to the quality and condition language within the Egg Products Inspection Act,” she says.

California has had animal housing requirements for poultry in place since 2008.

The National Pork Producers Council says they appreciate the administration’s actions and encourages lawmakers to approve a federal solution for conflicting state laws regulating farm production practices.

Rumley says legislation in Congress also could preempt state laws from regulating the production and distribution of ag products beyond their borders if passed.

The Food Security and Farm Protection Act introduced in April, sponsored by Republican Senators Roger Marshall of Kansas and Iowa’s Jodi Ernst and Chuck Grassley, has the potential to overturn Proposition 12 and other similar state laws if included in a farm bill.  

A coalition of more than 30 Democrats has sent a letter to Senate Ag Committee leaders opposing the legislation, saying similar language was excluded from farm bills in 2014 and 2018, and contributed to a lack of farm bill progress in the last Congress.

Read more on Rumley’s breakdown.