The National Pork Producers Council continues pushing lawmakers to address California’s Proposition 12 through the next farm bill debate.
Prop 12 required California animal housing requirements be met, even by out of state producers in order to sell pork products in California.
NPPC President Rob Brenneman, a pork producer himself from Iowa, says the organization believes a fix would benefit both farmers and consumers. “The reason that we’re after a Prop 12 fix is because it raises prices to the consumer, closes down demand. And once again, if it was voluntary, it’d be a lot easier. And so when we look for a fix, you know, we got it in the Farm Bill in the Congress side, and that’s, we’d like to see those merge and be done in conference, and hopefully we got the fix. And it might be exactly what Save Our Bacon says, but we can be darn close. And we were disappointed that it did not come out of the Senate side.”
Brenneman says the industry’s focus now is on keeping the issue alive as lawmakers work through the farm bill process.
“We’re sitting there with the true fix in the Farm Bill on the House side. And if we can merge those together in conference, come out with something on the other end, which is what our plan is, and we believe we can get that accomplished. And if the Farm Bill goes through, we believe we’ll be in there on that with the fix of some type through the conference.”
Supporters of Proposition 12 have argued that overturning the law could hurt smaller operations. Brenneman disagrees.
“Some people say, you know, that if we take it away, it’s going to hurt the small farmer. I will totally disagree. I think it’s going to hurt small farmer if it stays in. And so that’s the people that we believe, that our goal is keeping business just like the cattle guys. You got to have everybody, the more voices you have, the better off you are. And that’s what our goal is, is to maintain that, keep it in the farm bill, get it passed with a fix, and we’ll all be happy. We’ll get the consumers a lower cost product at the same time.”
National Pork Producers Council President Rob Brenneman, a farmer himself from Iowa, says NPPC will continue working with lawmakers as farm bill discussions move forward.
