Posted on 03/08/2014 11:22:49 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In 2008, California voters endorsed Proposition 2 which banned the confinement of animals. California egg producers had to ensure that chickens had enough room to move around which negated so-called “factory farming” and would end up raising the price of eggs by 20%.
Obviously this was a problem for California agriculture which would have trouble competing on price with free agriculture. And there’s only so much of a market for fair-trade free-range organic chickens lovingly raised in a Quaker school by social justice experts on a strict diet of granola and NPR broadcasts.
And so California’s reds decided to instead raise the price of eggs across America. Sounds fair, right?
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster (D) said Tuesday morning he has filed a federal lawsuit against the state of California over the Golden State’s new regulations on enclosures that house egg-laying hens. The regulations, Koster alleges, violate the constitution’s Commerce Clause.
California voters in 2008 passed a ballot initiative that require larger enclosures for egg-laying hens. Farmers in California worried the new rules, which would increase their costs, would put them at a competitive disadvantage with egg farms in other states, so the state legislature passed a measure in 2010 to require out-of-state producers to comply with California rules.
That, Koster says, is unfair to his state’s egg producers.
“If California legislators are permitted to mandate the size of chicken coops on Missouri farms, they may just as easily demand that Missouri soybeans be harvested by hand or that Missouri corn be transported by solar-powered trucks,” Koster said in a statement.
California farmers must begin complying with the cage law beginning in 2015, under the terms of Proposition 2. The legislature requires out-of-state farmers to begin complying with the same rules by the end of that year.
Koster’s office estimated that Missouri egg producers would have to pay $120 million to expand the size of their coops, and that production costs would rise 20 percent.”
That’s the whole point. The left can’t compete on product or price, but it can kneecap everyone else as long as it has control over populous states. Businesses and individuals can flee California, but they can’t escape its regulatory creep.
The country is awash in ballot initiatives and legislative efforts to increase regulation of agriculture. Maine and Connecticut have passed GMO labeling laws, although they won’t go into effect until other states in the Northeast have passed labeling laws as well. Florida has laws outlawing the most common method of pork production. Several states have outlawed small chicken coops, and states have also banned the sale of foie gras and shark fins. Only California has had the chutzpah to impose the preferences of that state’s voters on the rest of the country.
Make no mistake about it, if egg prices increase by 20 percent, people who face tight budgets at the grocery store will suffer.
But the people who make these laws won’t and California voters have become mindless stooges of the left. And if you buy your eggs with EBT cards, you don’t tend to care how much they cost because you aren’t paying for them anyway.
I was hoping to give a more broad answer, but since you are wanting to do this piecemeal, OK.
As a former hog producer I am going to answer your question specific to hog production as regards the room allowed animals .
When the talk is ‘animals quality of life’ you probably are thinking only of the sow (mother pig), and not the baby pig. Baby pigs get laid on, stepped on, crushed, injured, smothered and otherwise hurt when a sow is given too much room to move around, especially during and immediately following farrowing (giving birth). The newborn pig also has an easier time finding the udder when the sow is resting comfortably in the same location, and thus a much better chance of living.
There’s much more, let me know.
Strange moral position from a minister of the Gospel.
Church of Mystery Babylon?
.
Mystery Babylonian Chicken Wings For Sale!
I wonder if that’s the same as Mystery Meat....they used to serve it to us in the Army.
Both Mystery Meat and Mystery Babylonian Chicken Wings are prominent in the Book of Hezekiah. 29th Chapter, I think.
>> “Book of Hezekiah. 29th Chapter, I think.” <<
You think?
When?
I think it’s right after the part about Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox.
“You don’t get good and plentiful eggs if the chickees aren’t well fed and happy. That’s the market force that will ensure your hens have been well fed. Well, until the very end, then I have to hope they’re quick about it.”
Good eggs? Depends what your definition of good is. Plentiful, no argument there.
Market Forces? LOL. Yeah, that’s a religion to worship today.
“Being humane is now unconservative, I guess.
Some of these kooks here can’t be real.”
uber capitalists - anything else is a birkenstock wearing, obama voting hippie.
There is more to life than the market. But it’s a pretty good allocator of resources, as long as that’s all I ask of it. I seem to have come across as a bit of a Scrooge or something.
I GET MY EGGS FROM THE AMISH UP NORTH.I ALSO GET MY RAW MILK.NOTHING LIKE IT.
I GET MY EGGS FROM THE AMISH UP NORTH.I ALSO GET MY RAW MILK.NOTHING LIKE IT.
Has nothing to do with capitalism.
Raising crap and selling it as food is as Babylonian as you can get.
Dying from ingesting garbage is sooo conservative.
So when the blue ox poops in your ear, you think?
Frankly, I think chickens should be allowed to walk around as chickens, but they should have some room in their cage.
As for your hog analogy, there is always a context when dealing with reasonable care for the animal and different animals will be treated differently based on that context.
But animals should have clean food, water, air, room etc-or is that too radical for you?
Calif. cannot stop eggs coming into their state from another State, that is another issue.
But the author's view that the price of eggs would go up 20% is nonsense.
Supply and demand will deal with the price.
As someone who has raised a quarter millions hogs, birth to market, I can assure you that no producer can exist if they don't provide the things you listed.
Animal feeds are targeted to the specific animals being fed, taking into account their sex, age, weight, and dozens of other factors. The feed formula changes often, sometimes weekly, so that the very optimum feed is fed to the animals. Everything that group of animals need is taken into account, vitamins, minerals, you name it, it's analyzed, adjusted, and changed as conditions change.
Water is a key element for all producers, and water quality is analyzed and included as a key feed component. Backup wells and pressure systems are incorporated into every step of the building and production plan. Backup electrical generators provide electrical power for the pumps in the event of power failure, which are often top of the line variable speed drives, rivaling the sophistication of those used by municipal water systems. The backup systems insure that the animal have a continuous supply a fresh water. In the pen or cage, the water delivery equipment used is manufactured from stainless steel and plastics to reduce the buildup of contaminants, and is scientifically placed so that all animals have easy access to what is the cheapest food ingredient, water.
I would assert that animals raised by the American farmer dine and drink a more scientifically balanced meal than 95% of Americans, and probably 99% of the world.
Air supply and airflow are engineered into the building even before the construction begins, and those engineering standards are derived from decades of research preformed by universities.
The amount of room each animal has is also determined by decades of research, and I addressed some of that up thread.
To sum things up, you can relax a bit about the animal cruelty theme often touted by the Luddites who want us to produce our food the way we did a hundred years ago.
If all those terrible things are practiced, the producer, if he is still in business, will unmercifully be driven out by the most terrible and unforgiving master one can have in business, economics.
Animals were not made to live in cages.
We know about the veal being raised so it doesn't even get to walk so it's meat will be tender.
We know about the cattle being raised eating meat scraps and being injected with drugs.
We also know that many food industries lobbying to not allow the consumer to know the difference between cage grown chickens and range chickens, cattle raised eating grass vs cattle eating meat scraps and drugged to fatten them up.
I'm always working to expand my knowledge base. Can you provide references?
Regards meat scraps to beef, can you also provide references?
You may have missed my posts #258 and #259.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.