A federal court ruling recently denied a challenge to California’s Proposition 12, known as the Farm Animal Confinement Initiative.
In its ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a previous district court ruling that Proposition 12 is constitutional. So far, at least three courts have upheld the California law.
Passed in 2018, the proposition puts into law minimum space standards for animal confinement, and makes it illegal to sell pig meat, veal or chicken eggs within the state that were not raised in accordance with the new state rules.
California is not heavy on pork or veal production, which means the burden falls mostly on out of state and international companies, as reported by Food Safety News. Any company currently selling those products to California or who wished to do so would have to change their production standards to comply with the new state law.
Unsurprisingly, this did not sit well with a vast number of meat suppliers. Proposition 12 garnered a number of legal challenges including one by the North American Meat Institute (NAMI).
NAMI challenged California’s proposition on the grounds that such a rule violates the commerce clause to the U.S. Constitution forbidding trade barriers between states.
The Ninth Circuit ruling agreed with the district court that jurisprudence regarding the commerce clause is inconsistent and the law could not be considered discriminatory because it did not treat in-state and out-of-state companies differently.
“The district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that Proposition 12 does not have a discriminatory purpose given the lack of evidence that the state had a protectionist intent,” the ruling states.
In effect, Proposition 12 allows California to dictate farming practices nationally, which would disrupt the supply chain, said Julie Anna Potts, NAMI’s president and CEO, as reported by Food Safety News.
“We are disappointed in the court’s decision and we are planning to file a petition for a re-hearing en banc,” Sarah Little, vice president of communications for NAMI, told the Northern California Record in an email.
Re-hearings en banc are generally a long shot and involve all judges of a court in a ruling rather than only a select panel, and only when an issue is considered important enough to call for it.