The Animal Agriculture Alliance is releasing the following statement regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on California’s Proposition 12:

"Animal rights extremist organizations have been pushing for state-level legislation banning frequently-used animal care practices, such as gestation stalls for pregnant sows or cages for laying hens, for years. The true motive of these changes is to make it less efficient and more expensive for farmers to raise animals for food, driving up the cost of meat, dairy, poultry, and eggs for consumers, forcing them to make tough choices about what they can afford to feed their families and forcing farmers to make costly changes that may make it impossible to keep their business afloat."

"Today’s Supreme Court decision on California’s Proposition 12 sets a dangerous precedent for animal rights extremist groups to target other states with similar ballot initiatives. The Humane Society of the United States is a prime example of a group that focuses efforts on states that will be minimally impacted by the legislation, knowing they will receive less resistance within the state while setting a precedent. In California, specifically, farmers in the state raise less than 1% of pigs in the U.S. yet consume 13% of the pork ... This means that a significant majority of California’s pork is produced in other states, who will now be expected to comply with regulations passed by voters outside of their own state."

"Other states should prepare for similar initiatives, particularly those that allow for legislation to be passed via ballot measures. Ballot initiatives allow these extremist groups to bypass the traditional legislative process to go straight to voters on issues that the general public typically has little knowledge of and that tend to be oversimplified in ballot measure wording. This is particularly effective when it comes to emotional issues such as animal welfare. It’s extremely costly for the animal agriculture community to push back against ballot initiative campaigns, as the target audience is the state’s entire population rather than a limited number of state legislators. We need to be proactive in communicating and building trust with the public to reduce the effectiveness of these animal rights extremist-led campaigns that attempt to capitalize on misinformation."

"Animal care is too important of a topic to be dictated by oversimplified legislation based on emotion. Rather, it needs to be based in science and research."

Source: Animal Agriculture Alliance