Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

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Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

Post by CalItalian »

This would be substantial in lowering costs & regulations imposed by Prop 12 in California. One of the reasons why Farmer John is abandoning California.

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Re: Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

Post by storewanderer »

Smithfield also announced it was closing in California (are they the same as Farmer John?).

What parts got invalidated?

Certain major CA chains already significantly increased their pork pricing as if this did go into effect (Safeway.........). Others have kept pricing stable on raw meat department pork chops (Raleys, Save Mart) but have gone way up on the sausage/bacon/etc.

The companies who got in bed with CA to draw up the law who operate limited compliant pork farms must be in an interesting position now... they thought they were going to make a ton of money. Now their attempt to pay legislative bodies to regulate most of their competition away has been partially invalidated. Oh I forget, it is about the animals. No, it is about the money. It is always about the money- just a tug of war over who gets the money (the "new pork farms who are compliant with the law" or the old ones with cages).

At this point anything this administration can do to say they are not fueling inflation will be done. And this thing was going to cause pork prices to skyrocket (some stores already decided to take advantage). I am expecting some challenges on upcoming egg laws also.
Last edited by storewanderer on June 17th, 2022, 11:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

Post by jamcool »

Chinese-based Smithfield owns Farmer John.
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Re: Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

Post by veteran+ »

Oh well, I have not consumed pork in over 10 years.........................

😇
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Re: Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: June 18th, 2022, 7:14 am Oh well, I have not consumed pork in over 10 years.........................

😇
The new WinCo had a coffin full of Hormel Boneless Pork Loin Halfs at .98/lb. Great deal. Haven't seen them that low in a while (Save Mart had a 1.29/lb on them maybe last summer).

Many people use a lot of pork and certain ethnic groups particularly use a significant amount of pork in their cooking and laws like what CA proposes adversely affect them. Sure there are people and groups who do not use any pork and it will not impact them but it will impact a lot of people.

I am guessing the politicians did not do the math here or the timing was simply unfortunate. They should not be regulating "pork." We could make a lot of jokes about pork and politics. Inflation is raging and it is an election cycle. All politicians love pork in their bills. This is a topic nobody wants to talk about. They need to get this topic put under the rug fast.

We don't need to put a pork law into place that will push bacon to $18/pound and pork chops to $10/lb in CA where there is a large diverse population base using pork, in the midst of other raging inflation. People complaining about the price of pork would lead to numerous jokes about politicians and their pork bills.

Maybe next time they pass these laws like this, they need to put price caps on the products to ensure the few connected farm producers who get the legislation drawn up/sponsored are not allowed to price gouge and must keep the price of the product consistent with what it was before the regulation went into place or allow for 5% annual increases or something. If the lawmakers insisted on that, these companies who push these bills would suddenly lose interest.
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Re: Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

Post by veteran+ »

I was thinking of the planet and the animal but I get your point. :idea:
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Re: Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: June 18th, 2022, 11:49 am I was thinking of the planet and the animal but I get your point. :idea:
Yes there are people behind this law who are behind the planet and the animal but what really makes it happen is a well connected group of businesses aligned with certain politicians who see a money marking opportunity here.

The people who say they are thinking of the animal and the planet are just basically figureheads for these well connected groups of businesses who think they can take down an entire industry and take it over and do things their way (with a giant price hike in the process hurting the consumer). I would like to see more justification for their price hike.

You need more space because you can't cage the animals anymore? Gee, the middle of the US has what feels like endless space. Does this new rule really cause you to need to increase the pork price by 60+%? I don't think so. It may call for a modest price increase but not that.

And this is where this politics shows its true colors. If it were truly about "the planet and the animal" the lawmakers would insist prices would not increase in order to protect the consumer. Or limit the flow of price increases over time so as to not cause an immediate shock to the consumer (5% per year or something).

At the end of the day with all of these laws I feel like it is the consumer who just keeps losing. Big business wins, politicians win, consumer keeps losing.

Forcing the consumer into higher priced products they do not want is further angering the public. The cage free egg people could not get most consumers to buy those cage free eggs so they went around to various states and got the states to regulate egg sales in their state. Egg pricing in those states is 50-100% higher than surrounding states. In stores that offer cage free eggs and "cage eggs" the cage free eggs do not sell well and often go out of code. The consumer wants the lowest price. So the solution is to take away the "cage eggs" and force the higher priced cage free eggs on the consumer. Now the consumer pays $4 for a dozen of eggs that not long ago cost not much over $1. Add in a few "bird flu" incidents to push prices up even more and this is where you get. Where is the justification for that big of a price hike? Someone is making a lot of money here and it isn't the chickens.

The US consumer just wants the cheapest thing and doesn't care about much else. Oink.
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Re: Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

Post by HCal »

storewanderer wrote: June 18th, 2022, 11:55 am
And this is where this politics shows its true colors. If it were truly about "the planet and the animal" the lawmakers would insist prices would not increase in order to protect the consumer. Or limit the flow of price increases over time so as to not cause an immediate shock to the consumer (5% per year or something).
That's a nice idea, but I think it would be very difficult to establish price controls. What would they be based on and how would a fair increase be calculated? Even for regulated utilities (like electric companies) rate cases are very controversial and price increases often end up before judges who have to make a completely arbitrary judgment call on what price is justified and what isn't. Setting up such a system for food products would create a ton of bureaucracy and probably backfire.

A better system might be to break up the conglomerates AT&T-style and force some competition in the industry. If we had 30 or 40 companies competing to supply pork to supermarkets instead of 3 or 4, we wouldn't have to worry about price gouging.

Back to this law, I know the Democratic party sees inflation as the #1 threat to their performance in midterm elections this year, but this is still a disappointing move on their part. California voters approved this bill in a referendum and their will should not be overturned because of the economic interests of out-of-state farmers. Remember that when California passed the proposition on treatment of hens, people were predicting that eggs would become unaffordable and there would be shortages, while in reality the market settled down and the price increase (after the initial spike) was hardly noticeable.
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Re: Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

Post by storewanderer »

HCal wrote: June 18th, 2022, 11:35 pm

That's a nice idea, but I think it would be very difficult to establish price controls. What would they be based on and how would a fair increase be calculated? Even for regulated utilities (like electric companies) rate cases are very controversial and price increases often end up before judges who have to make a completely arbitrary judgment call on what price is justified and what isn't. Setting up such a system for food products would create a ton of bureaucracy and probably backfire.

A better system might be to break up the conglomerates AT&T-style and force some competition in the industry. If we had 30 or 40 companies competing to supply pork to supermarkets instead of 3 or 4, we wouldn't have to worry about price gouging.

Back to this law, I know the Democratic party sees inflation as the #1 threat to their performance in midterm elections this year, but this is still a disappointing move on their part. California voters approved this bill in a referendum and their will should not be overturned because of the economic interests of out-of-state farmers. Remember that when California passed the proposition on treatment of hens, people were predicting that eggs would become unaffordable and there would be shortages, while in reality the market settled down and the price increase (after the initial spike) was hardly noticeable.
I am afraid the ship has sailed on the competition and it is very unfortunate. The past 20 years have shown it does not matter what party is in power, competition keeps decreasing. Lots of finger pointing about who's fault it is or isn't, but ignore all that and the net result is the same- less competition and a lousy deal for the consumer. Also I would counter with you that laws like this pork law, if there were 30-40 producers, the opposition to it would have been so strong it never would have passed in the first place. All it would have taken was a few noisy producers going against it to kill the thing. When you get it down to 3-4 conglomerates it is easier to get a couple of them to go along and if the others don't fall in line they know they will be taken out of business so they will go along too. In theory anyway. Not quite how it played out here.

The consumer cannot afford any more price increases. You take the average market price of the pork products and you say that the price cannot go up more than 5% per year for 10 years. Similar to how stores are regulated on how much they can or can't increase prices during a disaster/pandemic on what are considered key items, anti price gouging laws (the rubbing alcohol folks are sure making up for that rule now).

My politics are probably pretty obvious from my posts and the fact that I am even suggesting anything about prices being regulated tells me how utterly screwed up the current situation is. But I am pretty frustrated with the greed I am seeing right now with regards to pricing across the board all over the place across various industries.

This type of CA-inspired regulation as we saw with the eggs causes a giant price hike all at once. This type of giant price hike all at once is un called for and it is not fair to the consumer. Greed is at play. It is easier for the consumer to ignore when it is one item (like eggs) but now when it is basically every item/service... And that is why I am saying there needs to be a price control. The pork industry warned for months that the prices would spike significantly if this law went into effect and some stores/producers went ahead and took the price hike or a big part of the planned price hike anyway.

Not to go on a tangent here but last week I needed to get a couple fire extinguishers their annual service. Usually this has been around $50. Went to the same publicly traded business I have before, and paid around the $50, that provides this service, was quoted $170 or some absurd price, and that was with me bringing them in there. I protested the price hike and was given a lot of song, dance, excuses about everything going up in price, and other lip service and excuses and then left. I called a local outfit who advised me they would come out to my location and service them for $40. I was sorry I didn't just use the local outfit in the past years.

Basically what happened when the CA egg law went into effect with the prices was what felt like price gouging.

So the only way this type of regulation can work is if price increases either stop or are capped. The consumer cannot afford the price of pork to go up by 50% or 100% or 200% like the eggs did all at once.

The other thing beyond price is I am wondering if the logistics system is so screwed up that there would be problems trying to transport pork around the country if this law was put into place.

Also I am suspicious the supply chain for the new "compliant pork" is not adequate to meet even CA's demands and another political reason they may be halting this law has nothing to do with prices/inflation but because they know it would be more political suicide if suddenly there are shortages of pork products in CA combined with a giant price hike.
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Re: Biden Administration Sides With Pork Industry to Invalidate Parts of Prop 12 at Scotus

Post by veteran+ »

I applaud your defense of the consumer!!!

:D

I just wish human beings would take a baby step and stop eating such an intelligent protein like the Pig. If we could give up just one animal protein, it could not only be humane but also help the environment.
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