California’s egg laws scramble farmers nationwide

By now, you’ve probably gotten over your New Year’s hangover. Soon, however, a quick trip to your local grocery store may be all it takes to bring back that queasy feeling and make your head spin all over again. That’s because egg prices likely will be much higher in 2015 than they were in 2014, thanks to the efforts of radical animal liberation activists.

And Nevadans will definitely feel it, as the reason originates next door in California.

The Golden State’s Proposition 2, passed in 2008, outlined new regulations for farmers across the state, forcing them to meet costly new chicken housing regulations. Another bill signed in 2010 extended this requirement to all eggs imported into California — essentially an act of economic protectionism. Both laws went into effect on New Year’s Day, and the effects are already being felt.

Considering that this past Thanksgiving, wholesale egg prices rose to their highest level on record, this is bad news for consumers. In fact, the implementation of California’s chicken-cage legislation stands to raise prices by an additional 10 to 40 percent, according to a University of California-Davis expert.

Moreover, the increase in prices will disproportionately harm disadvantaged segments of society. According to a new report done at Iowa State University, low-income people will be the most adversely affected, because they often rely on eggs as an affordable source of protein.

It’s one thing for California to regulate how farmers operate within California’s borders. It’s quite another to force those same requirements on other states across the nation.

What’s more, although Proposition 2 was sold to the public on animal-welfare and food-safety grounds, the reality isn’t so clear. Manure management may not be as advanced in cage-free systems. And according to the American Veterinary Medical Association, cage-free systems have higher rates of hen mortalities and internal parasites than cage systems.

If one wonders why the laws were passed in the first place, consider who pushed them.

When it comes to one of the new regulation’s biggest proponents, the Washington, D.C.-based activist group Humane Society of the United States, one doesn’t have to look far for that motivation. The Humane Society raises millions because people see its cat-and-dog ads on TV and in their mailbox, but the group has two dirty secrets. One, it doesn’t actually run a single pet shelter. Two, it’s a vegan group that doesn’t believe in eating eggs, meat or dairy — and it wants to put animal farmers out of business. (The Humane Society’s food policy director has infamously equated animal farms with Nazi concentration camps.)

The Human Society poured millions into passing the egg regulations, knowing it could cripple egg farmers. The costs to farmers of telling them to rip up their current hen houses are akin to telling someone to tear down his home and pay to build a new one — even though he hasn’t finished paying off his first mortgage. Many farmers may simply go out of business — which is just fine with vegans.

California’s newly enacted legislation sets a dangerous precedent. Why should one state hold such influence in regulating what should be the domain of Congress? The Constitution empowers Congress, not radical activist groups or Californians, to regulate trade between the states. While consumers in other states have representation in Congress, no one outside of California got a chance to vote on the egg legislation or the legislators who passed it.

Should Californians dictate what fertilizer can be used to grow corn in Iowa, or which nets to use for catching shrimp in Louisiana, or how farmers produce oranges in Florida?

Vegan activists misled Californians several years ago with manipulative claims and imagery and succeeded in getting laws that harm egg farmers in all 50 states. Now that the chickens are coming home to roost, it doesn’t look good for American families — most of whom had no say in the matter.

Will Coggin is a senior research analyst at the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies and consumers to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.