In-Depth: Prop 12 Fight Enters a Critical Stretch in Congress

The pork industry’s yearslong effort to rein in California’s Proposition 12 has reached another pivotal point, but whether Congress will provide the federal solution many producers have sought remains far from certain.

The House passed a farm bill this spring containing language that would prevent states from imposing livestock production standards on products originating outside their borders, which was a provision championed by the National Pork Producers Council as a solution to Prop 12 and similar state laws.

The Senate has taken a different approach — and there were signs months ago that the provision faced a difficult path in that chamber.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said in April that although he supported congressional action on Prop 12, he did not expect the Senate farm bill to include the House approach because of a lack of Democratic support.

“I’m very much for Proposition 12 getting it fixed,” Boozman told farm broadcasters during the National Association of Farm Broadcasting’s Washington Watch. “I don’t think there’s a single Democrat that would vote for it.”

Boozman said lawmakers had floated a compromise that would grandfather states with existing laws while preventing additional states from adopting similar requirements, but had been unable to attract Democratic support.

The political divide became clearer in June.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., publicly opposed the Save Our Bacon Act and efforts to include it in the farm bill, arguing the legislation would undermine state food safety and animal welfare laws and punish farmers who had already invested to comply with them.

“The Save Our Bacon Act does not belong in the Farm Bill, and I will fight to keep it out,” Schumer wrote in a June 23 social media post.