Trump administration sues California over egg prices and blames animal welfare lawshttps://srnnews.com/trump-administration-sues-california-over-egg-prices-and-blames-animal-welfare-laws/The Trump administration is suing the state of California to block animal welfare laws that it says unconstitutionally helped send egg prices soaring. But a group that spearheaded the requirements pushed back, blaming bird flu for the hit to consumers’ pocketbooks.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California on Wednesday, challenges voter initiatives that passed in 2018 and 2008. They require that all eggs sold in California come from cage-free hens.
The Trump administration says the law imposes burdensome red tape on the production of eggs and egg products across the country because of the state’s outsize role in the national economy.
“It is one thing if California passes laws that affects its own State, it is another when those laws affect other States in violation of the U.S. Constitution,” U.S. Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a statement Thursday. “Thankfully, President Trump is standing up against this overreach.”
I was wondering if this city-dweller feel-good insanity would become national news. The two feel-good initiatives imposed conditions on chicken ranchers, including specific requirements and certification from the State of California (= not free). Consequently: California ranchers had to pay to make any modifications and pay for certification (probably annually); out of state producers would incur the same costs, even if only a small part of their production goes to (or might) California.
These laws discourage or block out-of-state producers from selling to ~10% of the US population, hence this lawsuit. The other side of this turd means that decreases in in-state supply will result in much higher prices for California consumers. In the case of the recent bird flu epidemic and cull, it meant that eggs from states less affected and that recovered sooner were kept out of California. In stores, egg prices peaked higher, remained at their peak ($14-$15 for a carton of 18 was the peak) much longer, and are recovering (note the present tense!) much slower (still $9-$10 for a carton of 18; was ~$6 before the epidemic and cull) than in other states.
