Prepared Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
EATS Act Would End Coastal Overreach into America’s Heartland
Wednesday, June 21, 2023
The recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of a California law called Proposition 12 affecting the pork industry has sent shockwaves through the ag industry.
Particularly hard hit by the news is my state of Iowa, which is number one in pork and number one in eggs. And, another proposition in California law affects the selling of eggs in California.
California is 15 percent of the national market for pork, so you can see what California is doing can have a big impact on the pork industry in the other 49 states.
If California can regulate pork producers out of business through costly and unrealistic regulation, which food will be next? What segment of agriculture will be negatively affected next?
Consumers should be waking up to the reality of activist policies coming from folks on the Left who want to put the kibosh on animal agriculture.
California’s law is based on arbitrary and prescriptive standards that lack any scientific, technical or agricultural bases.
It also jeopardizes sow safety. And for you city slickers, sow is a word we use for mother pigs.
The cost to implement Prop 12 has been measured to be approximately $3,500 per sow, a cost that farmers will need to pass on to the consumer.
This additional cost will threaten the independent pork producers in rural Iowa and run them out of business due to burdensome regulations. And I’m not only speaking for Iowa pork producers – even though we are the number one in pork production – this is affecting pork producers in the other 49 states.
The result of this law will be significant on Iowa’s independent pork producers.
We know people will continue to eat pork chops, ham, and bacon.
But, this will only lead to further consolidation so that you will only have three or four companies controlling the entire supply of pork for our country.
The future of the independent pork production is at stake, and I do not want to sit idly by as pork producers across Iowa go out of business.
So, this Monday – our national holiday when the Senate wasn’t in session – I met with forty pork producers in Palo Alto County.
Hearing from Iowans firsthand on this issue was especially impactful.
Iowa producers who have raised hogs for more than 50 years told me that they’ve never been this worried.
“How will rural agriculture fight against the special interests and big money of the coasts?”is a question I was asked.
How can farmers afford to remain compliant with nonsense policies written by someone who has never been on a hog farm? So, there has to be a solution to what California is negatively doing to pork producers in the other 49 states.
Senator Marshall and Senator Ernst and I have been working on a solution.
The EATS Act prevents states from impeding ag trade from other states within the United States under the constitutional power of Congress to regulate interstate and foreign commerce.
Our legislation is an example of Congress regulating interstate commerce.
In the Court’s majority decision -- it was a 5-4 decision -- an odd combination of liberals and conservatives on the Supreme Court [said] California did the right thing, and an odd combination of liberals and conservatives said California didn’t have the power to do what they did under our Constitution.
But in this majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that Congress has the power to regulate commerce, but has yet to enact legislation to displace Proposition 12.
Now, I read Justice Gorsuch saying something like this: “Why should we say that California has acted unconstitutionally when Congress has the power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, and they have not done it?”
This bill would put an end to California’s war on breakfast and override the coastal state’s overreach into the Heartland’s breadbasket.
The Supreme Court asked Congress to act.
So that’s what Senators Marshall, Ernst and I, and many others [who]have joined us in this effort[are doing] – we are responding to this Supreme Court decision.
Feeding your family is not a partisan issue and neither is protecting our food supply chain.
Food security, after all, is national security.
I’m engaging in discussions with as many colleagues as I can on this very issue. I hope this will soon be a bipartisan bill.
It’s commonsense to protect affordable, quality food for America’s families and support the two percent of the country we call “family farmers” who feed the other 98%.
Remember, bacon doesn’t grow in the grocery store.
I urge all of my colleagues to join me as a co-sponsor of the EATS Act.
I yield the floor.
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