SUPREME COURT HEARS ARGUMENT OVER CALIFORNIA ANIMAL CRUELTY LAW

Voters' Victory Banning Extreme Confinement Under Threat, as Pork Industry Challenges California's Proposition 12

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On October 11, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a lawsuit challenging a California animal cruelty law, Proposition 12, which passed in a 2018 landslide victory, with over 60% of the vote. Animal protection organizations, including D.C.-based Animal Outlook, have intervened as parties to support California in defending the law. Fifteen State Attorneys General have also weighed in, submitting a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Prop 12. The coalition of intervening organizations say that the case–which was filed by powerful corporate interests within Big Ag in an attempt to gut an overwhelmingly popular law–is a threat to the rights of voters to protect animals from some of the worst abuses in animal agriculture.

"Voters gave pigs sold as pork in California a mere 10 sq.ft. more space, and the industry has fought them all the way to the Supreme Court to keep some of the worst animal cruelty on California's grocery shelves–and intensive confinement is far from the only type of widespread cruelty in the industry," said Cheryl Leahy, Executive Director of Animal Outlook. "When a powerful industry will stop at nothing to make complicity in cruelty mandatory, it's a clear sign that cruelty is the way animal agriculture operates, and the only way to refuse to be a part of it is to boycott this industry by not eating animal products altogether."

PROP 12 DETAILS

• California voters approved Prop 12, in a rare instance of bipartisanship, by 63% of the vote on November 6, 2018 
• Prop 12 requires that eggs, pork, and veal cannot be sold in California unless the egg-laying hens, mother pigs, and baby cows used to produce them were kept in conditions that violated standards for freedom of movement, cage-free design, and minimum floor space.
• Prop 12 also prohibited confining these animals in non-compliant cages in California
• Standard gestation crates are cages that nearly immobilize mother pigs. Prop 12 requires just an extra 10 sq.ft. of space (an increase from 14 to 24 square feet), which allows these animals to, at the very minimum, turn around
• The National Pork Board sued to overturn California's anti-cruelty law. Two lower courts threw the case out, but the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider it
• Recent surveys have reported that 80% of voters across party lines nationwide support the protections provided by Prop 12. Nine other states, both "blue" and "red," have similar requirements

The case is National Pork Producers Council v. Ross.

ABOUT ANIMAL OUTLOOK
Animal Outlook is a national nonprofit 501(c)(3) animal advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. Its mission is to aid animals by strategically challenging the status quo of animal agribusiness through undercover investigations, legal advocacy, corporate and food system reform, and empowering everyone to choose vegan. https://animaloutlook.org/

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SOURCE Animal Outlook

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