SFC13557
NES Member
New rules on pork production will lead to regional shortages.
From today's WSJ.
It's here, start stocking up until Supreme Court hears the case. The sheeple have voted, no more bacon for you carnivores
"Americans are bringing home less bacon as pork prices have jumped 8.5% over the last year. Now animal-rights activists in Massachusetts are piling on costly farm regulations that could inflate pork prices and cause shortages across the Northeast.
Bay State voters in 2016 approved a referendum that would prohibit the sale of products from farms that confine “any breeding pig [sow], calf raised for veal, or egg-laying hen in a way that prevents the animal from lying down, standing up, fully extending its limbs, or turning around freely.” Hog farmers would be most affected since nearly all are housed in individual pens.
Final regulations specifying how supermarkets, restaurants and hog farmers must comply with the law keep being delayed, no doubt because this means tracking pork throughout the supply chain. State lawmakers last year postponed implementation until Aug. 15 to avoid causing more supply headaches.
“There’s so many things that there’s shortages on, it’s almost like throwing salt on a wound,” Larry Katz, president of the Massachusetts butcher shop Arnold’s Meats, told Western Mass News. He said major companies have announced plans to stop selling pork in Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts rules would also bar noncompliant pork from being distributed to other states in New England. Massachusetts imports most of its pork from North Carolina and the Midwest, and it is a distribution hub for Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine. In other words, the rules could affect the production and sale of pork across a broad swath of the country.
The National Pork Producers Council last week sued to block the rules from taking effect. Compliance “is not merely a matter of changing the size of the pens,” the group explains, but entails “the far more complex task of taking a supply chain developed to create and deliver a consistent commodity and reconfiguring it to differentiate Massachusetts meat” at each step of the way. The group adds that the rules would also endanger the health and safety of sows, which can attack one another if not separated.
Producers also make a strong argument that the rules violate the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which prohibits states from substantially burdening interstate trade. Massachusetts claims it can impose the regulations under its constitutional police powers to protect public health and safety, but the rules don’t do either.
If Massachusetts can prohibit the sale and mere distribution of meat produced by out-of-state farms, why couldn’t it do the same for goods manufactured by businesses that don’t follow its more onerous labor regulations? Or how about products made with coal power?
Democratic states are increasingly imposing their progressive cultural values on other states. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has a chance to stop this regulatory imperialism. The Justices in October will hear a challenge to California’s similar farm animal regulations, which are on hold pending the Court’s review. States that extend their regulation too far and harm other states need to be penned in."
![[rofl]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/013.gif "ROFL [rofl]")
Save your anger for our enemies, we have many and they are all around us.
