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Iowa official predicts egg law challenge
Iowa secretary of agriculture Bill Northey says California’s law requiring other states to comply with California’s larger cage size requirements for egg-laying hens will not go unchallenged.
“This will be addressed—Iowa is not going to back down and say that California can tell Iowa producers what to produce out here,” Northey says. “California can tell California producers anything they want to about how they’re going to produce within their state. But legal and safe eggs from Iowa—and right now about 30 percent of the eggs in California are coming from Iowa—need to be able to be allowed in California.”
Northey says that, as of next January 1st, Iowa eggs—if they’re not produced according to California’s standards—would not be allowed in California. But Northey says that, oddly enough, California producers would not be held to that standard for another year.
“So it clearly discriminates—there will clearly be lawsuits,” Northey says. “Certainly Iowa as a state is likely to engage. I think we’ll have Iowa producers, too.”
And Northey says the battle is not just about eggs.
“It’s a template to bring those kinds of laws from anyplace about anything,” he says. “So it could be about sow crates next. It could be about GMOs, it could be about what herbicide is used on a farm.
“So there’s a lot at stake here—and even a lot at stake for folks outside of California and Iowa.”
Missouri’s attorney general has already filed a lawsuit alleging that California’s law violates the constitution’s commerce clause.
AUDIO: Bill Northey (2:04 MP3)
Dennis Morrice, KLEM Radio, Le Mars, Iowa contributed to this story.
Bill Northey is in error–the law effects egg producers regardless of location.