Senate Democrats, including the Senate Ag Committee Chair, urge Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to support California’s Proposition 12 before the Supreme Court.
Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla of California, along with New Jersey’s Cory Booker and Senate Ag Chair Debbie Stabenow from Michigan, made the request in a letter to Vilsack.
In 2018, California voters passed Proposition 12, which set humane standards for farm animal products sold in California.
But last month, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a lawsuit challenging Proposition 12.
The lawmakers who support the voter approved measure write, “States should not be stripped of their authority to mitigate the harm that inhumane farm animal confinement poses to animals, people, and the environment.”
National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation call the law unconstitutional, adding Proposition 12 “sets arbitrary animal housing standards that lack any scientific, technical or agricultural basis and that will only inflict economic harm on U.S. hog farmers and consumers.”
