The Supreme Court ponders animal welfare

A case that features lighthouses, horsemeat and bacon has the justices stumped

OSAGE, IA - JULY 25: Hogs are raised on the farm of Ted Fox on July 25, 2018 near Osage, Iowa. According to the Iowa Pork Producers Association, Iowa is the number one pork producing state in the U.S. and the top state for pork exports. The state sends about 50 million hogs to market each year and its pork exports totaled more than $1.1 billion in 2017. Pork producers in Iowa are bracing for the impact a trade war with China and Mexico may have on their bottom line going forward. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Oct 13th 2022|NEW YORK

“Miserable, laborious and short”, is how one character describes the life of a pig in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. Nearly two-thirds of California’s voters approved a ballot initiative, Proposition 12, in 2018 in an attempt to fix the miserable part. Yet America is supposed to be an integrated market, for pork and everything else. So what looks like an example of a state going its own way in fact requires the justices of the Supreme Court to weigh the “dormant” commerce clause, a constitutional wrinkle that is supposed to prevent states from indulging in protectionism, and whose origins stretch all the way back to a debate about how states might fund lighthouses in the 18th century.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Sow confusing”