Can California’s Pig Law Save Our Bacon?

C an bacon save us? Americans’ love affair with the BLT, bacon-egg-and-cheese-on-a-roll, the Baconater (Wendy’s is pro-adoption, after all), and even brussels sprouts with bacon — you can continue the litany as you head to the refrigerator — would suggest as much. But could a defeat of the pork industry’s lawsuit against a California law insisting on a little mercy for pigs before they are slaughtered for our enjoyment actually save innocent unborn lives in the end?

Matthew Scully wrote beautifully earlier this week in “A Brief for the Pigs: The Case of National Pork Producers Council v. Ross.” He opened by quoting the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, a religion editor of National Review and the founding editor of First Things, saying that “the horrors perpetrated against pigs on industrial farms” was a matter “that warrants public and governmental attention.”

Like Father Neuhaus, Kathryn is a New Yorker — concrete under your feet and all. We don’t have to assume Father Neuhaus’s sentiments to note that the frequent reality of pets in the city is that the sidewalks are public bathrooms and the dogs often seem as unhappy and lonely as the people. And, truth be told, ever since she was a young girl, a dog attack has kept her hesitant, at best, around non-cartoon animals. Kelly, on the other hand, lives on a ranch in New Mexico, surrounded by animals. (She, in fact, ran into some pigs in her neighborhood while we were writing this.) Her horse often shares her morning coffee. Both of us share a heart for children, born and unborn. (Kelly and her husband John adopted four children from foster care.) While Kathryn isn’t rushing to share porcine company, we both agree the description of how pregnant pigs can’t move in the crates they are put in is obscene. With dominion comes good stewardship — of the kind that is worthy of humanity.

We believe abortion is the most profound human-rights issue of our lives. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Mississippi abortion case that put an end to the Roe v. Wade regime that insisted on legal abortion in all three trimesters of pregnancy, puts abortion back in the hands of the state. States like Mississippi will have mercy on the most innocent humans among us, voiceless unborn children. States like New York, however, will beckon women and girls to come make a vacation of their abortions. The mercy of the end of Roe is that Mississippi can choose the right thing.

And so it is with California and animal cruelty.

In 2018, 7.5 million California voters enacted Proposition 12, the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act, a ballot measure that prohibits sales within the state of pork, eggs, and veal that came from operations where animals were cruelly and unnecessarily confined in tiny cages. Some pork producers confine mother pigs in cages barely larger than their bodies, preventing them from even turning around. As Scully wrote earlier this week at NRO: “These are the iron, fit-to-size cages in which the creatures, about six million of them at any given moment in our country, are kept almost completely immobilized for all of their lives, unable to walk or even turn around.”

He added:

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Court heard a 2020 case involving a pig farm owned by a subsidiarity of Smithfield Foods, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III remarked during oral argument on “the inhumanity to the animals and the fatality rate” at the farm, and later noted “the outrageous conditions,” the “almost suffocating closeness” of the pigs, the “animal suffering” — and wondered in his written opinion “How did it come to this?” He was referring to the same confinement methods to be examined in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross.

While Kathryn is skeptical about the Humane Society claim that pigs are smarter than human three-year-olds (she knows some clever toddlers who could give adults a run for their bacon), she doesn’t want to see them living in such torturous conditions. Wouldn’t that be a common reaction among people of goodwill once they were made aware? As it was in California? And Scully points out: “Ten states ban gestation crates. And every time the matter has been put before voters, in states as politically different as Arizona and Massachusetts, the pork industry has lost decisively.”

Proposition 12 honors the right of California voters to decide for themselves about animal cruelty. The voters spoke clearly to prevent out-of-state entities from imposing their views on what products should be in California’s marketplace.

Proposition 12 has been upheld repeatedly by federal district and circuit courts, several large pork producers (Perdue, Tyson, Hormel, and Clemens Food Group) have been willing to comply with the law. Still, some in the pork industry have appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The pork industry’s interpretation of the Constitution in this case could be dangerous, not just for animal welfare but for states’ rights in general. The potential risks of a ruling against Proposition 12 go well beyond California’s law. They include the ability of out-of-state actors to force their views on another state and its citizens. A ruling against Proposition 12 could also embolden activist federal judges, acting on their political views, to strike down state legislation on a variety of issues. Most alarmingly, a ruling against California’s Proposition 12 could be used to try to weaken life-affirming laws and regulations enacted by citizens and the legislatures in pro-life states.

In this way, National Pork Producers Council v. Ross is far from just about pigs. It’s about the character of people and our commitment to the Constitution’s respect for states’ rights. A ruling against the pork industry could save more than a kinder, gentler care for what will eventually be your bacon. As Scully points out: “In America’s advance of humane and civilized legal standards, the states have often led the way — so that today, for example, malicious cruelty is a felony in every state. And other than those who profit from the abuse of animals, or are simply indifferent, who resents those state reforms? California’s majority is hardly alone in believing that we are a better country for the work of this noble cause.” Today Californians see the cruelty of confining pregnant pigs to immobility.

We pray that their moral blindness to the developing child in her mother’s womb be a next natural step. Tenderness is an essential element of the kind of civilization of love the late Pope John Paul II wrote about in his Gospel of Life. Perhaps in this post-Roe reality, the states will lead the way, even if they have to start with pigs.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor at large of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute where she directs the Center for Religion, Culture, and Civil Society. Kelly M. Rosati is a child-welfare advocate and the author of Wait No More: One Family’s Amazing Adoption Journey.