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.
or, quit selling to the communist, envirowackos that will soon die from an earth quake Californians.
Just pretend the earthquake has already happened and the market is destroyed because California is gone
Agreed. I have no problem paying $5 a dozen for local farm raised eggs. The yolks are deep orange, the whites are firmer, and they’re just darned good. I would never go back to mass produced eggs.
And, the law CA passed does seem to be in violation of the interstate commerce clause. I’m not sure how requiring growing conditions of another state wishing to trade with you, for example, is any different than levying a tariff. That is in essence what they are doing.
“You mean, like...
Green Eggs and Ham?”
I guess. The green ones have orange yolks and the whites aren’t white, they’re kinda yellow. The hens are beautiful birds, looking’ kinda like male pheasants.
It is not just “eggs” that are higher due to CA.
Have you recently bought a simple plastic gas can? CARB gas cans are very expensive, and I cannot see a reason for them to be this complicated. It is all BS!
Screw CALIFORNIA. I get my eggs from a farmer down the street in North Carolina.
I’m in California. I always bought cage free organic eggs, because I don’t think it’s right to mistreat animals. The price of eggs didn’t go up noticeably, at least for me.
Nobody’s talking about naming them, cuddling them or making them pets. Reasonable people expect livestock to be treated humanely and most farmers would agree. I also think it makes a difference with the quality of the food.
Why should California, a hostile communist foreign country, have ANY say in what Americans do?
eight days a week.
If u can get a couple of hens, no rooster required, and you can have your own fresh eggs. chickens r the easiest animals to take care of. Of course I know not everyone is able to do this.
I refuse to eat healthy animals. I prefer sick ones.
Think about it.
Cougars, out in the wild, pick off the sick and the lame of a herd. In so doing, they eat, and the herd becomes stronger. They are actually HELPING the herd.
I have a cougar’s instinct.
I don't know if I should laugh or cry.
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?
Pay for your animal rights crap but don’t force it on everyone else!!
Chickens for eggs or meat are nothing but food machines!!
Ameraucana chickens do lay green or blue eggs.
Many others lay brown eggs.
Most commercial producers raise chickens who lay white eggs.
The Reason? I don’t know that.
How would they enforce it? It would require California agriculture inspectors to have inspection rights on farms in other states, wouldn’t it?
It used to be that such breathtakingly logical and reasonable responses such as yours would be found in the first, second or third response.
Your post was #13 -- which makes me wonder just what in the hell is becoming of good old fashioned logic and reasoning on this forum.
Well said, and of course a good Conservative response to Liberal foolhardiness.
I underlined the flaw in your thinking. It's not "theirs," it's "ours." They didn't earn it, but we did before it was taxed away from us and given to the holder of the EBT card.
Imposing their beliefs on others is 'taking the high road'?
Seesh.
See my post to Lurker above. Applies to you also.
Personally, I'm distressed by the lack of Conservative common sense displayed on this thread. What the hell is happening to this forum??
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