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.
“Caging chickens 24 hours a day for their entire lives, just doesn’t seem to me to be the way that God intended that these creatures be treated. God gave men Men stewardship over the beasts of the field, but that does not give men the moral right to abuse them.”
You speak the truth. For similar reasons, we don’t eat Veal anymore either. I am not a Peta radical, but “man” does have a moral obligation to treat animals decently.
Pop-tarts, Hot Pockets and an X-Box. All in Mom's basement.
I refuse to eat healthy animals. I prefer sick ones.
ISTR in “Lucifer’s Hammer” (Pournell & Niven) a doctor advised the cannibal “tribe” not to eat the sick humans; eat healthy ones to avoid disease...
Play Kantner and Slick’s “Silver Spoon” for musical accompaniment for *that* meal.
Good history/animal production lesson, and probably where the Luddites want to take us.
After being in animal production for so long, I’d long forgotten how it was when I was a kid. Seeing all that first hand has had an effect on the type of foods I want to eat today.
My dad used to raise turkey’s. He had them on the range after they were big enough. Large alfalfa fields with open turkey shelters (basically just large roofs) for sun and rain protection.
The problem with domesticated turkeys is that they are stupid. They would run out into the rain, looking up into the sky. The rain would run down their beaks, into the nostril openings, and they would drown by the hundreds.
Was using open range for those turkeys an ‘animals quality of life’ issue, to use the phrase of someone upthread?
I'm not sure I can agree with that 100%. We have laws against animal cruelty. But if you are making the argument about food animals in a barnyard, then it's valid.
I agree. God didn’t tell us to exploit the Earth and its animals without care. We are caretakers.
I don’t want to sound like a CTer but do all the anti-biotics and hormones given chickens and other animals account for the rise in things like an allergic reactions to peanuts?
No, that is powdered vulcanized rubber.
Think about it: Automobile travel has increased incredibly throughout the 20th century along with the concomitant use of tires. Where do the tires go? The vulcanized rubber wears on paved roads into a fine powder.
In parallel with the increase of powdered vulcanized rubber in the environment is a tremendous rise in peanut allergies and homosexuality.
Q.E.D.
/nutjobconspiracy
I'm answering for myself, not the poster you replied to.
I'm not at all upset, just the opposite. I also think supporting the local farmers is a good thing too. I'm pro-capitalist on those issues, as you apparently are.
“Yes I agree they voted for this let them supply their own eggs.”
Yes we did, and so what’s it to you if we decide that humane treatment of chickens is worth the cost? Actually, we’ve been getting great eggs from friends who have some chickens and those birds are allowed to move around in a substantial enclosure. Healthy chickens produce more healthful eggs. Actually, I don’t give a a flying F where you get your eggs, or your fresh fruits and vegetables either. Winter or summer, we have great produce to eat along with our eggs. As someone said, “you are what you eat!”
That’s very true about domesticated turkeys. Whenever I think of the term, “box of rocks” I think of domesticated turkeys. They would not survive in nature. I don’t think they can even breed.
Farmers maintain the health of their animals in order for them to be productive. They also slaughter them at the end of their laying cycle. I know chickens. I have no sympathy for chickens. They are dirty, obnoxious, wasteful animals. Best way to deal with chickens is keep them in the smallest cage possible for their own good. Free range is sappy nonsense. Let them run wild and any number of predators will put them on their menu. Chickens are not puppies. They are livestock raised for one purpose, food.
Define 'humane treatment'.
Laz, from what I have seen of your posts you don’t have a cougar’s instincts. You have an instinct FOR cougars (and younger women too, of course).
I agree with you.
“Define ‘humane treatment’.”
Have you ever been to a place where they raise chickens for both eggs and meat?
If you have been to a “traditional” chicken ranch, I think you know what isn’t humane treatment. Now I read in the article this California’s laws somehow “violate” the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. We have truly jumped the shark and we need a moratorium on the production of another kind of “meat,” lawyers.
There are moral rights and legal rights.
To take forcible control of other people's property when it its use has no direct affect upon us is an act of covetousness. Hence, an act of animal cruelty beyond the property of another is a matter of collective interest.
But if you are making the argument about food animals in a barnyard, then it's valid.
It is better to work on the heart of the perp than to invoke the power of the state simply because elevating such to a matter of police power is a threat to all, as who controls the state then controls all property.
Upthread a bit there is a post from one experienced in raising chickens, and he pointed out that when chickens are unhappy or sick, they don’t lay many eggs. The few that do get laid get spoiled.
Ranchers have known for centuries that if you want good product, you’re good to the animals, and that doesn’t just apply to chickens. They also know better than to get too attached to them and concerned about their welfare because, at the end of the day, they are all going to die.
Well, at least we know they cannot OVERTLY apply a tariff. Though many would argue this law is a tariff, I don't agree.
However, it IS an obstacle to suppliers in the market that reach beyond the state border and is likely to be ruled Unconstitutional...leaving the remaining CA egg producers at severe market disadvantage.
Egg production will continue to decline here...but they will be better eggs!
The cheaper eggs fr4om out of state will dominate the market...moving additional business, production and tax base out of the state.
Now, if we could just figure out how to export the 10 million welfare recipients we'd be all set.
Alas, the politicians in Sacramento instead pass laws that attract the freeloaders from all over the country (and outside the country too!).
Yep, we're a complete and total basket case.
But it sure is pretty here. And, did anyone tell you bout all the sunshine and wonderful weather?
It's about all we have figured out.
The rest of it is like watching a retard after a half bottle of whiskey and two hits of acid. Not a damn thing you can do but stay out of the way.
100% correct, Sir (or Ma'am, whichever is appropriate)!
I’ll only buy cage-free eggs.
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