Hinson touts effort to foil California livestock rules

BOONE — States like California should not be able to dictate how animals like swine can be raised in Iowa, Republican members of Congress said Wednesday during a public discussion of the next Farm Bill.

"We're not telling producers what to do here," said U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who represents Iowa's 2nd Congressional District. "We're respecting producers to raise their animals the way they want to."

Hinson was referring to a provision in the current House version of the next federal Farm Bill, which governs a variety of agricultural and food-assistance programs. The provision would overrule state laws such as California's Proposition 12 that sets comfort standards for breeding pigs whose offspring yield certain types of pork products, such as uncooked bacon, loins and ribs.

The proposition passed a statewide vote in 2018 and went into full effect this year.

The California law does not directly require out-of-state pork producers to allow those pigs greater room to live — at least 24 square feet — but the producers must adhere to the requirements if they want to sell their meat in that state.

California is a major market for pork, and Iowa is the largest pork-producing state. There are about 24 million swine at Iowa farms at any given time.

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"We want to make sure that that pork product is accessible and that we're not shutting ourselves out of 15 percent of the market in the country," Hinson said.

Hinson introduced legislation in 2021 to counteract the California law, but it was not adopted by lawmakers. The U.S. Supreme Court last year upheld Proposition 12.

So some Republican lawmakers inserted the issue into their next version of the Farm Bill, which cleared the House Committee on Agriculture months ago but has stalled. The previous Farm Bill expired last year and was extended to the end of September. It's unclear when a compromise bill might emerge.

"It's about the elimination of livestock agriculture," U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican who leads the ag committee, said of the California law and similar efforts in other states.

Thompson predicted "an uprising" in California over pork price increases, which he said were as high as 40 percent. A study shared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in February estimated that the increase was about 7 percent.

Products such as sausage, ground pork and cooked hams are not affected by the law.

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The proposed Farm Bill's livestock provision — which does not circumvent California's ability to regulate pork production in its own state — is among several issues yet to meet compromise, including how to balance spending on assistance to farmers and to low-income families.

The comments about the Farm Bill were part of a roundtable discussion hosted by the Farm Progress Show, an annual gathering to celebrate advances in agriculture and talk farm policy. It is held in Boone every other year.

Tom Vilsack, the U.S. agriculture secretary, said Wednesday in a separate chat with reporters at the show that it's possible for federal lawmakers to forge a compromise bill before the end of the year.

"The areas of differences are just a handful," Vilsack said. "They're big. They're significant. But they're not impossible to bridge."

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