Breakdown of Prop 12 in Supreme Court

The Supreme Court will hear arguments this fall regarding California’s Proposition 12—which creates new rules for different products such as swine, veal calves and eggs in California.

Animal Agriculture Alliance President and CEO Hannah Thompson Weeman says it’s significant that the Supreme Court will consider the case.

“And a lot of folks in animal agriculture, especially in the pork community, are kind of waiting with bated breath to see what the result is, because it is going to set an extremely significant precedent when it comes to the state level pieces of legislation that impacts not only producers in that state that passed the legislation, but in the case of things like prop 12, affecting producers across the country.

There's a reason that activist groups try to get these pieces of legislation passed in states with very little of the production in questions, a very intentional strategy and it calls a lot of questions when it comes to interstate commerce. and is that fair to producers to be regulated by citizens who live in a completely different state.”

Proposition 12 is mostly about pork, but the concept has an impact on everyone in animal agriculture.

“An Oregon ballot initiative legislation that would have redefined any processing of an animal as cruelty. So, these ballot initiatives are really cross-species, they're really impactful.”