Triumph Foods wants out from under Prop 12

After a federal judge ruled earlier this year that Massachusetts’ nearly decade-old Question 3 violated the U.S. Constitution, it was only a matter of time before California’s Proposition 12 faced a similar challenge.

Today, Triumph Foods, the winning Massachusetts plaintiff, became the first processor to sue California over Proposition 12. Proposition 12 is the law that prohibits the sale of eggs and pork in California unless they come from farms operated under state dictates.

Agricultural company Triumph Foods is a leading processor of premium pork products. Triumph makes claims never pursued by any previous Prop 12 plaintiff, and expands the challenge to Prop 12 by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has filed claims against Prop 12’s egg provisions.

Proposition 12, aged 7, and Question 3, aged 9, are both “farm animal cruelty prevention laws” that ban battery crates for chickens and gestation crates for pigs. Producers who do not comply with various animal housing requirements are denied access to public markets.

Triumph’s new lawsuit builds on the company’s approach to Massachusetts Question 3 (T3), where Triumph successfully obtained a district court order striking down part of that state’s law for violating the outstanding Commerce Clause. Triumph claims the same unconstitutional provision exists in Proposition 12.

Complaints filed against Prop 12 include that the federal government already regulates Triumph Foods — and similar facilities inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture — and that states cannot add to or interfere with these regulated spaces when they are preempted by congressional authority.

In 2011, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the National Meat Ass’n. c. Harris that Congress has already passed enforceable legislation and ruled that state laws that usurp the role of the federal government and disrupt our nation’s food supply are unconstitutional.

“Congress has already acted and is regulating pork production in our country,” said Matt England, president and CEO of Triumph Foods. “A national food supply chain depends on consistent regulation from the federal government, free from a patchwork of interfering state requirements. »

Earlier this year, the current Supreme Court chose not to accept the appeal of the Iowa Pork Producers Association’s Proposition 12 challenge. The San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had rejected the IPPA case.

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