Republicans ready assault on California animal welfare law

WASHINGTON — The “save our bacon” battle of 2025 has begun in earnest.

The pork industry and its allies inside and outside the Beltway on Wednesday launched the latest round in its yearslong fight against a 2018 California law setting animal welfare standards, with a multipronged effort focused on upcoming farm bill negotiations this fall.

Ahead of a House Agriculture Committee hearing on California’s Proposition 12 with a stacked lineup of industry witnesses, Republicans made public a letter from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins arguing that the law has led to a “partial segmentation in the national pork market” resulting in higher consumer prices.

At the same time, a group of seven GOP governors wrote to lawmakers on Wednesday urging them to limit the scope of California’s law so it doesn’t apply to pork sales outside of the state. The letter, led by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, came as Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, and other farm-state colleagues prepared to introduce industry-backed legislation that they’ve dubbed the “Save Our Bacon Act.”

The California law requires that pork products come from a pig born to a sow with room to turn around in her enclosure. The law defines that as a 24-square-foot space and calls anything less as keeping the animal in a “cruel manner.” It also set standards for veal calves and egg-laying hens.

The Golden State law and federal efforts to counter it have sparked strong emotions on both sides of the issue.

The pork industry and its allies on and off Capitol Hill have launched a furious lobbying effort to narrow the applicability of California’s statute so that it doesn’t affect commerce in other states, while animal rights activists counter that California lawmakers had it right and that federal standards should be toughened.

The Supreme Court in 2023 upheld Proposition 12, which took effect at the beginning of last year, against a legal challenge from the National Pork Producers Council. But at the same time, the court opened the door to congressional action to settle the matter via legislation.

Wednesday’s hearing was packed with interested observers who spilled into an overflow room, with the Capitol Police set up outside the room in case of unruly protesters.

Stacked deck

Committee Republicans lined up six panelists to testify on the issue, including two representing the National Pork Producers Council.

Others included Matt Schuiteman, a farmer and board member of the Iowa Farm Bureau; Travis Cushman, American Farm Bureau Federation deputy general counsel; Lilly Rocha, Latino Restaurant Association executive director; and Tiffany Dowell Lashmet, a Texas A&M professor and specialist in agricultural law.

Lashmet’s was the only voice that wasn’t aligned against Proposition 12, but she characterized herself as an unbiased analyst, not in favor of one position or the other.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., took aim at Republicans for stacking the witness panel.

“This hearing will not get them closer to overturning Proposition 12, and that’s because this hearing is a potential misrepresentation of reality. The reality is that Prop 12 took effect at the beginning of last year, and the fearmongering is falling flat,” McGovern said. “There are thousands of farmers who vocally support Proposition 12, but Republicans have not given them an opportunity to speak today.”

McGovern criticized large pork producers for continuing to push back against the law after the Supreme Court ruling.

“They lost, and now instead of moving on — as so many family farmers have done, by the way — they’ve come to Republicans for a legislative bailout,” McGovern said, submitting 150 letters for the record in support of the California statute.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals tried some counterprogramming of its own during the hearing, releasing testimonials from family farmers across the country who they say employ more humane production processes.

For example, Anna Pesek, owner of Over the Moon Farm in Coggon, Iowa, said overturning Prop 12 would only help the big industrial pork producers while hurting “farmers who are trying to do better by their animals, their land, and their communities.”

Pork price impacts

Rollins’ letter, dated July 21 and made public before Wednesday’s hearing, was in response to an earlier request for information from House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa.

“Since its implementation, stakeholders in the pork industry — particularly small and mid-sized producers— have expressed concerns about market fragmentation, increased production costs, and diminished competitiveness,” Thompson wrote in his request.

Rollins responded that Proposition 12 has impacted interstate commerce, pointing to industry data that shows about 35% of federally inspected slaughterhouses have systems in place that are compliant with the law. She said producers regularly segregate compliant and noncompliant pork through dedicated supply chains.

“(Economic Research Service) modeling suggests that such segmentation may increase transition and distribution costs by $0.07 to $0.11 per pound on compliant pork, compounding inflationary pressure,” the letter states.

It also said the Agriculture Department’s ERS found that retail pork prices in the state increased by 18.7% “year-over-year,” compared with a nationwide increase of 6.3%. Pork loin prices increased from $4.12 per pound in December 2023 to $4.89 per pound in June 2025.

Rollins added that a May USDA consumer affordability study found that low-income California households reduced pork purchases by 22%.

The letter also broke down the impact on pork producers. April ERS data estimated that approximately 27% of U.S. producers have made or are making investments to comply with the law, which can cost between $3,500 to $4,500 per sow.

“Compliance costs disproportionately affects small and mid-sized producers, who face tighter margins and less access to capital,” the letter stated.

Rollins said that as of the first quarter of 2025, 12% of small pork producers who have fewer than 500 sows “have exited the market or shifted production away from breeding, citing regulatory uncertainty and high transition costs.”

Meanwhile, Reynolds and the other GOP governors — representing Oklahoma, Nebraska, Indiana, Mississippi, Virginia, Missouri and Nevada — wrote that legislation was necessary to clarify that “one state cannot regulate livestock production beyond its own borders.”

“We support the right of individuals to choose which animal products they purchase and consume. … We also support the right of each state to lawfully regulate livestock production within their own borders,” the governors wrote. “But when one state decides to regulate another, federal legislation is appropriate and necessary.”

‘Blue-state bacon bans’

House Republicans included language in the draft farm bill they released in the last Congress that would have broadly preempted state regulation of farm and agribusiness production, including livestock, dairy, fish and any processed or manufactured products.

Hinson’s latest version, introduced Wednesday with 18 GOP co-sponsors, would narrow applicability to domestic animals raised for human consumption or for dairy products. It would not apply to egg production, or to the movement, harvesting or further processing of covered livestock outside of the farm gate.

The measure would “provide clarity to national markets by ensuring producers only need to comply with standards in their own state or local government,” according to Hinson’s staff.

Proposition 12 opponents are hoping to gain traction with their argument that it could become too costly for pork producers to comply, limiting the supply of or raising prices of one extremely popular consumer product nationwide.

Her bill would block “blue-state bacon bans,” Hinson said in a statement.

“This legislation will stop out-of-touch activists — who don’t know the first thing about farming — from dictating how Iowa farmers do their job,” she added. “(T)here will be no bacon ban on my watch.”

‘Civil war’

The Agriculture Committee hearing may not have featured pro-Proposition 12 witnesses. But hog farmers with the Responsible Meat Coalition nonetheless made their presence known, donning bright yellow buttons saying “PROTECT Prop 12 and American Farmers.”

One of those hog farmers is Brent L. Hershey, owner of Hershey Ag, a 3,000-sow operation in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Hershey said his farm completed the transition to comply with Proposition 12 two years ago.

He said he came to realize that gestation crates — small, cramped metal stalls to house individual pregnant pigs — aren’t “a good system. You can’t defend it.”

Hershey was disappointed that Wednesday’s hearing lacked farmers voicing his perspective.

He said the changes to his farm increased long-term costs by 3% and he was able to retrofit his facilities at less than $1,000 a sow, much lower than the USDA estimate. His prices went up after initial compliance with Proposition 12 but have since come down about 30%, Hershey said.

“Our sow longevity increased,” he said, adding that about 6% of his sows die every year. “It’s all because of our system. The animals get to walk around.”

He said the farm bill provision to curtail states’ ability to regulate animal welfare laws would result in “devastation on all those producers” and it would take years to recover.

The division over Proposition 12 has caused bad blood with the National Pork Producers Council, to which Hershey pays dues.

“They’re ignoring 27% of the industry. They’re ignoring us,” Hershey said. “I think it’s wrong. You could call it a civil war in the pork business because we have this whole group saying this is what we’re going to do, and you’ve got the old establishment saying no.”

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