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.
Speaking for myself, I'm just another work in progress. I sure have met a lot of smart people here.
No, I did not wonder. They simply evaporated and were assimilated back into the atmosphere. So dilute it never hurt anybody. Except may be in CA.
***chicken thieving and cattle rustling. I am setting up a website to educate those interested in gaining the necessary skills,***
I got my skills from reading old Snuffy Smith Cartoons.
This is why, even though this egg business is not quite an Interstate Commerce issue as Greenfield posits, it’s important. It’s because California has a habit of metastasizing its bad habits to the rest of the country via the federal government when it finds out the people are squirming out from under their thumb.
53 Representatives have a lot of sway in DeeCee.
Spoken like a true naturolater. Ah, what did science ever do that you should hate it?
Nobody’s talking about putting opinions into law here.
Who says an egg producer has to serve California at all.
It is kind of hard to get the other kind out of the cages once you get them home (duck’n & runn’n!)
Also there are bacteria that ferment organic compounds into good/bad ole carbon dioxide and water. That’s probably the fate of most hydrocarbons emitted into the air.
Did you read Greenfield’s article, by chance? CA voters just put opinion into law.
Yes, but that was not what the side-discussion was about.
Ah! Gotcha. I thought that might be the case...I punched back a couple of replies to see if that was the case, but I missed the nature of the side-discussion.
n/m
We do the same thing. The eggs are delicious. Some of them are white, some are brown and some are blue.
Many conservatives are so afraid of being lumped in with tree-huggers and such that they fall right into that particular trap.
A conversation worth having. Staying clear of the trap is not always easy when the other side has control of the language. To me, that is where this nation’s recovery has to start, and we have a long, long road ahead of us.
I’ll probably be off this mortal coil by the time we get the language back. Well, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, right?
No sane person I ever met. Hell, I live here and I hope none of them comply.
Ya know, if every kid in America ate a boiled egg every day it would likely raise the collective IQ of the country by 10 points.
The vast majority of that increase would come whether the eggs are free range organic, or "factory". Throw in an apple, some Fritos and a glass of milk and we would have changed the world.
The market should be allowed to set the price of eggs without interference from any outside force.
But it would be nice to know what the hens have been fed.
You don’t get good and plentiful eggs if the chickees aren’t well fed and happy. That’s the market force that will ensure your hens have been well fed. Well, until the very end, then I have to hope they’re quick about it.
It is obvious someone has never raised a chicken and knows nothing about how to do it so the animal is healthy and well.
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Absolutely right!!!! I raise chickens too. PEOPLE who grow up in rural environments learn about life and death and survival in the REAL WORLD. In addition to what he has outlined, you soon learn to get over eating your “pets”. Eating t-bones and hamburgers from “Brownie” the tender calf. Eating fried chicken from “Cocky” the expendable rooster. Eating baked chicken from old “Henrietta” the spent hen. Eating bacon, ham, and sausage from “Porky” the pig.
All the while, predators and varmits of every descriptions will be glad to kill and eat your animals leaving the left over parts for you and buzzards. Its a challenge against nature to survive by your own endeavors. Something, a lot of people are too ignorant accept in the digital age.
Animals provide food for our tables. Free range sounds good, but in realty ever witness dead or injured chickens that have been attacked by a varmit. Not a pretty sight...
And try finding those free range eggs, a daily Easter hunt. I particularly don’t know how long those eggs have been laying around in 100 degree sun before I found them. Enjoy those free range eggs and think about that...
Also, ever have to “put down” a sick animal or a varmit you have trapped?
I’m so old, I remember when we had to arm ourselves to prevent thieves or varmits from stealing our animals. And a well placed shot into a varmit resolves that issue in a humanely way.
Get her to pee on a stick.
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