(The Center Square) - Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said a new Massachusetts law restricting hog imports could cost pork producers millions.
Bird filed a brief in U.S. District Court on Tuesday supporting a Missouri food processor challenging the law.
St. Joseph's Triumph Foods filed a lawsuit in July, saying the Massachusetts law, known as Question 3, is unconstitutional. The law bans pork processors from selling or shipping products to the Bay State that do not meet the state's hog housing standards.
Iowa is the top hog producer in the U.S. Iowa's inventory is 23 million a head, according to a March 2023 report.
“Massachusetts’s radical pork ban hogties Iowa pork producers,” Bird said. “With these strict new mandates in effect, Iowa farmers will face extreme costs and regulations to compete in the industry, forcing many family hog farms to close shop. Massachusetts doesn’t get to dictate how Iowans farm."
The situation would be the same if Iowa enacted a law of how fishermen catch shellfish, Bird said in her brief.
"Iowa neither employs nor consults experts within the field—the Atlantic fishing community is simply not that large. And so, without fishermen to raise their concerns with local legislators or voters, this new hypothetical law is enacted. While that law equally affects Atlantic fishermen across the country, it likely would impose greater compliance costs on States that have a more meaningfully sized fishing industry than Iowa...That is no different from the current approach of some States that do not raise hogs trying to impose unworkable restrictions in States that do," Bird said in her brief.
The law violates the Constitution in three ways, Bird said. It violates the Commerce Clause, that says the federal government, not state governments, regulate interstate commerce. Question 3 also breaches clauses that ban states from charging import taxes on products brought in from another state and require states to respect the rules of their counterparts.
Massachusetts imports almost all of its pork products, according to the brief. Stop and Shop, a retail grocery chain, told a Massachusetts television station the new law would make pork prices rise.
California enacted a similar law and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in May. Studies show that the California law would cost $294 to $348 million.
The brief was signed by attorneys general in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming and South Dakota.
via Oklahoma's Center Square News