‘Save Our Bacon’ smells like politics

Top Iowa Republican leaders have mobilized to defend bacon.

What is the threat to bacon? It’s Proposition 12, a measure approved by 63% of California voters in 2018 requiring chickens, veal and pigs sold in the state must be raised in spaces that give them enough room to move around. A breeder pig must have 24 square feet of living space.

Most large hog confinement operations in Iowa don’t provide that much space. So, if Iowa pork producers want to sell pork in California, they must provide more space.

“California activists now claim to know what’s best for the producers who have raised livestock from generation to generation. The Save Our Bacon Act will allow Iowa’s farmers to continue doing what they do best — feeding our country and the world,” Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a statement last week.

The Save Our Bacon Act is federal legislation allowing pork producers to sell to markets outside Iowa without following “arbitrary mandates,” such as the California law.

“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,” said Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is a sponsor of the bacon bill.

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Proposition 12 is constitutional in a 5-4 ruling. So federal legislation is now the only route to scrap California’s law and prevent others.

We understand pork producers’ concerns. But we’ve also grown weary of the massive effort agricultural interests make to keep the status quo solidly in place.

In Iowa, pork producers don’t want environmental effects to be a meaningful part of the Master Matrix scoring system used to approve confinement operations. They don’t want stricter water quality regulations, even as a massive amount of hog manure spread on fields carries nitrate into waterways. They don’t want to give local officials a say in where operations are built.

Truly caring for the environment is not profitable enough.

We’re also fed up with this type of governing.

Over and over again, Republicans who run the Statehouse and don’t like decisions made by local leaders passed legislation yanking away local control. Now, Iowa Republican leaders and ag allies want a federal law telling Californians they have no right to pass a state law applying their values to the food they eat.

So, we’re not on board with the agricultural status quo, which has given us dirty streams, lakes and rivers. And we’re not willing to condemn the will of California voters, who are not all activists.

More is at stake than bacon, If Congress overrules California here, what’s to stop it from invalidating other state-level food safety or environmental regulations?

It would be great if stakeholders around this issue could find some common ground to diffuse the debate. Otherwise, Congress should respect California voters and realize bacon does not need saving.

(319) 398-8262; editorial@thegazette. com