When California voters go to the polls in about two weeks, they’ll decide a wide range of issues, from governor to U.S. senator, and a host of state ballot measures from housing assistance for veterans to repealing the gas tax to changing daylight savings time.
They’ll also decide the fate of a far-reaching food and agriculture issue that affects millions of animals and is being closely watched by farmers and animal welfare groups across the nation.
Proposition 12 would tighten California’s laws on cages for farm animals, requiring more space than many large farms currently provide. It would ban the sale of meat in California from calves raised for veal or breeding pigs unless the farms that raise them — both in the state and in other states — meet minimum standards for pen size. It also would ban the sale of eggs from hens that are kept in cages that don’t meet minimum standards. And by 2022, it would require all eggs sold in California to come from cage-free operations.
“Chickens are put in barren, wire cages the size of your microwave oven, with six to eight other chickens,” said Josh Balk, vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, which sponsored the measure. “Mother pigs are put in pens so small they can’t turn around for up to four years. I think most Californians believe we have a moral obligation to ensure that all animals are protected from cruelty.”
The measure is endorsed by the Humane Society, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Sierra Club, the California Democratic Party, the United Farm Workers, the Center for Food Safety, and a variety of veterinarians and religious organizations.
If passed by a simple majority, the law would require 43 square feet of space for each calf raised for veal by 2020, 24 square feet for each breeding pig by 2022 and one square foot per hen by 2020, with all egg-laying hens required to be cage-free by 2022 — in other words, allowed to roam around a barn or large coop.
Farm groups oppose the measure, which would go further than farm welfare rules in other states. They say it will raise costs for farmers and, as a result, raise food prices.
“All Proposition 12 does is allow trial lawyers to file predatory lawsuits against egg farmers, who provide some of the healthiest food on the planet,” said Jamie Johansson, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation. “Proposition 12 would push egg prices higher in the state that already suffers from the nation’s highest poverty rate.”
If the issue sounds familiar to some voters, there’s a reason. Ten years ago, voters overwhelmingly approved a similar measure, Proposition 2, on the 2008 state ballot, which also was sponsored by the Humane Society.
That new law required veal calves, breeding pigs and egg-laying hens to be kept on farms in conditions that allowed them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up and fully extend their limbs by 2015. It won by 63-37 percent, losing in Central Valley farm counties, but passing by margins as high as 70 percent or more in Los Angeles and Bay Area urban communities.
In the years after, major food companies, including McDonald’s, Costco, Wendy’s, Safeway WalMart, Nestle and Taco Bell, announced they would only buy cage-free eggs.
But Proposition 2 didn’t provide specific square-feet limits. After it passed, farmers argued that they could still keep chickens in cages. A UC Davis study concluded that it would wipe out California’s egg industry because it only applied to farmers based in California and farmers from other states would flood California stores with eggs produced more cheaply. So state lawmakers passed a new law in 2010 requiring that it apply to all eggs, veal and pork sold in California, even if it came from other states.
That prompted lawsuits from Missouri and a dozen other farm states, who said it violated the U.S. Constitution’s interstate commerce clause. So far those lawsuits have been denied by courts.
But in a setback for the Humane Society and its allies, officials at California’s state Department of Food and Agriculture issued guidelines that said chickens could still be kept in cages and be in compliance with the law. So Prop 12 is essentially an effort to tighten the law by animal welfare groups.
Ten years ago, critics said the first law would raise prices on eggs and hurt farmers. That happened, to some extent.
A study published last year by Purdue University concluded that Prop 2 had raised egg prices 9 percent by the fall of 2016 above where they otherwise would have been. On a $3 carton of eggs, that’s about 27 cents.
Since then, California has produced fewer eggs. In 2007, California farmers produced 5.3 billion eggs with a value of $346 million. By 2016, that number had fallen by about a third, to 3.5 billion eggs with a value of $210 million.
Merced, Riverside, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties are the state’s top egg-producing counties, accounting for about two-thirds of all the state’s egg production.
Some of the decline would have happened anyway, said economist Daniel Sumner, director of the UC Davis Agricultural Issue Center.
“The egg industry has been declining for decades in California,” Sumner said. “Raising eggs is about converting corn and soybeans to eggs. It’s expensive to haul corn and soybeans around. And we don’t grow corn and soybeans in California.”
But Sumner predicted if Prop 12 passes, it will raise the price of some types of eggs, perhaps by as much as 50 percent, and the price of veal and pork by about 20 percent.
Although farm groups spent $9 million trying to defeat Prop 2 a decade ago, this year they are spending almost nothing. The Yes on Prop 12 campaign has raised $6.1 million, while the No campaign has raised only about $566,000.
And in an odd quirk of California politics, some activist animal welfare groups, such as PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, oppose Prop 12. They argue it doesn’t go far enough or give enough space to chickens, who still can be confined in barns if it passes.
“We can do better,” said Bradley Miller, director of the Humane Farming Association, and a spokesman for the No campaign, during a radio debate Friday on KQED’s Forum program. “One square foot per hen is cruel. They should have more space than that.”
