Bacon may disappear in California as new law could make pork harder to find, more expensive

Thanks to a revamped menu and long opening hours, Jeannie Kim managed to keep her San Francisco restaurant alive during the coronavirus pandemic.

It is all the more frustrating that she fears that within months her breakfast-themed diner could be ruined by new rules that could make one of her top menu items – bacon – hard to come by in California.

“Our number one seller is bacon, eggs and hash browns,” said Kim, who has run the SAMS American Eatery on the city’s bustling Market Street for 15 years. “It could be devastating for us.”

Early next year, California will begin pushing through an animal welfare proposal that was overwhelmingly adopted by voters in 2018 and that needs more space for breeding pigs, egg-laying chickens and calves. National veal and egg producers are optimistic that they can meet the new standards, but only 4% of pig farms meet the new regulations. Unless the courts intervene or the state temporarily allows non-compliant meat to be sold in the state, California will lose almost all of its pork supply, much of which is from Iowa, and pork producers will face higher costs to reclaim a key market.

Animal welfare organizations have been pushing for more humane treatment of farm animals for years, but the California rules could be a rare case in which consumers clearly pay a price for their belief.

With little time left to build new facilities, inseminate sows, and process the offspring by January, it is difficult to imagine how the pork industry can adequately supply California, which consumes approximately 15% of all pork produced in the country.

“We are very concerned about the potential impact on supply and, by extension, cost increases,” said Matt Sutton, public policy director for the California Restaurant Association.

California’s restaurants and grocery stores consume about 255 million pounds of pork a month, but its farms only produce 45 million pounds, according to Rabobank, a global food and agriculture financial services company.

The National Pork Producers Council has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture for federal aid to fund retrofitting of pig farms across the country to fill the void. Pig farmers said they failed to comply because of the cost and because California has not yet established formal regulations to administer and enforce the new standards.

Barry Goodwin, an economist at North Carolina State University, estimated the additional cost to be 15% more per head for a farm with 1,000 breeding pigs.

If half of California’s pork supply were suddenly lost, bacon prices would rise 60%, bringing a package from $ 6 to about $ 9.60, according to a study by Hatamiya Group, a consultancy hired by opponents of the state proposal. Let dollars rise.

On a typical Iowa pig farm, sows are housed in 14 square meters of open air crates when they join a herd and then for a week as part of the insemination process before moving to larger group pens, approximately 20 square meters, with other pigs. Both are less than the 24 square feet that California law requires to give breeding pigs enough room to turn over and stretch their limbs. Other operations keep sows in the boxes almost all the time and therefore would not comply with the regulations.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture said that while the detailed regulations have not yet been finalized, the main rules for space have been known for years.

“It is important to note that the law itself cannot be changed by regulations and the law has been in effect since the 2018 proposal to contain farm animals (Prop 12) passed by a large majority,” the agency said in response to questions from the AP .

The pork industry has filed lawsuits, but so far courts have backed California law. The National Pork Producers Council and a coalition of California restaurants and business groups have asked Governor Gavin Newsom to postpone the new requirements. The council also hopes that meat already in the supply chain could be sold, potentially delaying bottlenecks.

Josh Balk, who leads farm animal protection efforts at the Humane Society of the United States, said the pork industry should accept the overwhelming view of Californians who want more humane treatment of animals.

“Why are pork producers constantly trying to overturn animal cruelty laws?” Asked Balk. “It says something about the pork industry if it looks like their business is to lose the vote if they try that To defend practices and then, when animal cruelty laws are passed, try to overturn them. “

In Iowa, which raises about a third of the country’s pigs, farmer Dwight Mogler estimates the changes would cost him $ 3 million and accommodate 250 pigs in what is now 300.

In order to be able to afford the costs, he would have to earn an additional $ 20 per pig, Mogler said, and so far the processors have offered far less.

“The question for us is, if we make these changes, what will be the next change in the rules in two years, three years, five years?” Asked Mogler.

The California rules also pose a challenge to slaughterhouses, which can now send different parts of a single pig to locations across the country and to other countries. Processors need to develop new systems to track California pigs and separate those premium cuts from standard pork that can serve the rest of the country.

At least initially, analysts predict that customers in other parts of the country will hardly notice a difference, even as California pork prices rise. Eventually, California’s new rules could become a national standard because processors can’t afford to ignore the market in such a large state.

Kim, the San Francisco restaurant owner, said she survived the pandemic by cutting down her menu, driving hundreds of miles across the Bay Area herself to deliver food and cutting staff.

Kim, who is Korean-American, said she was particularly concerned about small restaurants whose customers can’t afford big price hikes and which specialize in Asian and Hispanic dishes, which usually contain pork.

“You know, I work and live with many Asian and Hispanic populations in the city and their diet is pork. Pork is huge, ”said Kim. “It’s almost like bread and butter.”

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