Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster filed a lawsuit yesterday in federal court challenging California’s law requiring that eggs sold in the Golden State come from hens that can turn around and stretch their wings. It seems that Koster—at the cost of state taxpayers—is trying to force Missouri’s sub-standard products on California consumers, even though the California legislature has declared such products to be repugnant to the values of its citizens and a threat to public health. It’s a shameless sop to Big Agribusiness on Koster’s part.
States have long had the right to pass laws protecting the moral views, health and safety of their own residents. Whether it’s setting requirements for the sale of fire-proof cigarettes, the testing of livestock infected with brucellosis or tuberculosis, firewood infested with termites, or eggs from hens confined in cruel, barren battery cages that are more likely to carry Salmonella. Koster’s suit is a courtroom resurrection of the failed King amendment, and if successful, could threaten state laws across the country dealing with animal cruelty, agriculture and food safety—including his own state’s laws on the labeling of seeds and weeds, the sale of adulterated commercial feed, the health of hogs and milk products entering the state, and labeling and container sterilization for the sale of alcohol.
Koster’s gambit is also the latest in a series of lawsuits trying to roll back California’s basic standards for the humane treatment of farm animals, rather than respect California consumers’ right to determine what they want. Opponents of Prop 2 in California have already lost three challenges to the law, with one federal court stating that it “does not require the investigative acumen of Columbo” to apply the standards. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals also rejected a very similar challenge to California’s ban on the sale of foie gras from force-fed birds, holding that it was well within the state’s broad authority to enact humane laws and prevent animal cruelty.
When California’s legislature passed the law now being challenged, it explained in the findings, “According to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Production, food animals that are treated well and provided with at least minimum accommodation of their natural behaviors and physical needs are healthier and safer for human consumption.” Iowa, the largest egg producing state, was home to a Salmonella outbreak in 2010, resulting in more than 1,000 people being sickened across the country and prompting the recall of a half-billion eggs. There have been nearly 20 studies published in recent years comparing caged and cage-free egg operations, and almost all found significantly higher rates of Salmonella in the caged facilities.
Why should California be forced to buy products that are unsafe and inhumane? Missouri producers can and should sell into California, as long as they adhere to reasonable production standards that are consistent with California’s law, in this case designed to protect its citizens’ objection to needless animal cruelty and to protect the health and safety of the state’s consumers. California’s production standard is workable for farmers, and it’s time for producers in Missouri and elsewhere to improve their operations and move the economy forward rather than continuously try to slow it down with court challenges.
If Koster doesn’t like differing state laws on egg production, the answer is not a race to the bottom: A more reasonable and rational approach is to pass the Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments, S. 820 and H.R. 1731, to phase in, over an ample time period, a uniform national standard for the housing and treatment of laying hens. The egg industry wants to move away from extreme confinement practices, and needs federal legislation to do that in an orderly way. We hope Koster will join us, and the U.S. egg industry, in lobbying Congress to pass the bill.
