Farmscape for June 16, 2021

The National Pork Producers Council warns a California ballot initiative due to take effect at the end of this year which imposes arbitrary standards for the production of livestock has implications for pork producers throughout the United States and Canada.
Proposition 12, a ballot initiative passed in California in 2018 and due to take effect at the end of this year, imposes new minimum space requirements for calves raised for veal, breeding sows and laying hens, restricts the use of certain production practices and bans the sale of product from any farm that fails to meet those standards.
Michael Formica, the Assistant Vice President and General Counsel with National Pork Producers Council told reporters on hand last week for World Pork Expo in Des Moines this means anyone anywhere that supplies pork to Californians must meet these standards.

Clip-Michael Formica-National Pork Producers Council:
California passed one of these initiatives but then it also took it one step further and it prohibited the sale of pork altogether if it didn't meet the really arbitrary and unjustified standards.
California is the sixth largest economy in the world.
If it was its own country, it would be behind Germany and ahead of the United Kingdom and is about 15 percent of the U.S. market for Pork.
A big part of the focus here has been on the US but there are going to be impacts from this on our friends above the border.
A lot of pork production in Canada, a lot of sow farms up there and the piglets from those sow farms often times end up south of the border and get finished here.
If the meat from those piglets ends up in California, then California will be regulating those farms in Canada.

Formica says the NPPC remains cautiously optimistic that arguments asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to strike down the proposition will be successful.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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