America’s farmers and livestock producers have had enough of left-wing states like California imposing their radically clueless ideas on them and they’re taking their fight to Congress.
Senators Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kan.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Cindy Hyde-Smith, (R-Miss.) were motivated to introduce new legislation called the Exposing Agricultural Trade Suppression Act (EATS Act) in order to counter California’s Proposition 12 (Prop 12).
Protect the Harvest reports the congressional legislation was “introduced in the U.S. Senate aimed at preventing states and local governments from interfering with agricultural interstate commerce.” The EATS Act protects agricultural producers across the country from acts like California’s Prop 12, which requires livestock producers outside of California to conform to animal housing and other standards set by radical animal rights activists under the guise of “public health.”
“The EATS Act would prevent states from impeding agricultural trade from other states within the United States—consistent with the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which provides the federal government with the duty to regulate interstate commerce,” said Sen. Hyde-Smith in a press release. “State and local units of government would still be able to regulate farming and ranching within their own jurisdictions, however, this legislation makes it illegal to impede trade from fellow states.”
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More than twenty U.S. states have challenged Prop 12 and “several other states have adopted or contemplated laws that would affect the agricultural production outside their state” since it was signed into law in 2018, but “this pro-ag, pro-jobs legislation would establish a federal standard that fosters greater interstate commerce among states without interference from activist cit[ies] or state governments,” she said.
“It shouldn’t be up to California to tell other states how they should be producing their agricultural products,” Grassley told WNAX in an interview. “California is not only being unfair to its own consumers but to producers in other states and is likely violating the U.S. Constitution with Proposition 12.”
How bad is Prop 12 for producers and consumers? Yahoo News reported that under Prop 12, “bacon may disappear in California” while, simultaneously, America’s producers would lose access to one of the nation’s largest markets once the new standards are fully “administered and enforced” at the beginning of next year. In fact, the unintended consequences of yet another leftist regulation will almost certainly lead to higher production costs for the producers, more bureaucratic red tape for the processors, and ultimately lower supply and higher costs for the consumers.
It’s no surprise other states don’t like being forced to adhere to California’s left-wing laws. “Mississippians don’t like the idea of liberal states like California imposing their radical ideas on us or dictating how our farmers and ranchers do their jobs,” said Hyde-Smith, who serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee. “I’m sure that’s the case from coast to coast.”
Indeed it is, Senator. We also don’t like California leftists threatening our supply of bacon.
The EATS Act has now heads to the Senate’s Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
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