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.
Look it up, google is easy to use.
I’m unable to find any information from land grant colleges (who are charged with being on the front line of such things) or any other respected organizations.
Surely you haven’t fallen in with the Food Luddites have you?
Steve Forbes has written about the dangers they pose to Americas food supply.
Falling in with the Food Luddites does explain some of the other misconceptions you have about our food chain.
If you are a Conservative, and you don’t have to be to post here, you will give serious consideration to reexamining your knowledge, and sources of ‘knowledge’, on the subject.
We pay 2.50 a dozen, delivered to our door, every other Wed. Occasionally our egg lady gifts me with some duck eggs, which she knows I like for baking.
The chicken eggs are brown and are from pastured hens. The yolks of these eggs are a beautiful deep orangey-yellow, not pale like those grocery store cheapies and the whites are not thin and watery. Best poached eggs ever!!!
This thread has shocked me. I can’t believe I am seeing some Freepers okay with whacko CA standards being dictated to the rest of the country. There is a huge difference between pets and animals destined for food consumption. Not conservatives in my book.
Bogus response. Our pup loves to sneak into her crate for a nap.
“Best poached eggs ever!”
Abdo-lutely! I get about 1/2 brown and 1/2 green.
Maybe the other 49 states (56, if you’re Obama or one of his supporters) should ban together and require California to:
- stop being so liberal.
- stop allowing illegals to vote.
- stop exporting liberals.
If most farmers agree, and don't do this, then why is it that you ignore the Constitutional issue and rant on about chicken comforts? Why should the entire nation be subject to one state's laws when they are based on a notion that you already assert is mostly untrue? If most farmers don't do this, then why must 300 million people face higher prices to address an issue that only concerns a few farms and have it dictated by only one state?
I willingly pay higher prices for fresh eggs from local farms. Don't need any laws in place for that - it's a consumer choice. If others want to eat cheap eggs from chickens that are cooped up in cages all their lives, that's up to them.
By living in a cage I mean, never leaving it.
So stop talking like a fool, you are an embarrassment to conservatism.
Seems you are the one supporting Kalifornia liberal standards like this one for the rest of the country. Hell, you don't even sound like a conservative. Do you realize what the impact of a buck here and a buck there does to the bottom line of many poorer Americans who are having a tough time getting by so that animals (intended for food) can be more comfortable.
And you are calling me a fool? Take your du Vegan viewoints elsewhere.
Yes, like the price of eggs is going to be affected so much people won't be able to afford to eat eggs-balony!
Pr 12:10 ¶ A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel
You defenders of cruelty to animals are not conservatives, you have no sense of right and wrong.
And it is an out and out lie that I am defending animal cruelty. I support financially my local shelter, so don't give me that bs. What are your credentials with our pets? Probably a PETA officer huh?.
You defenders of unnecessary regulation, and government largess are more in line with the dregs at du than here.
Do you know the first law the Nazis passed after gaining power in Germany? Banning Kosher slaughter.
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