I raise hogs on pasture, 200 head, and I compete against operations with 50,000 animals in confinement that externalize every cost: the manure lagoons, the dead zones, the stench my neighbors downwind from those facilities live with. California voters passed Proposition 12 in 2018 setting minimum space requirements, and the Supreme Court upheld it in 2023. CDFA. The market did not collapse. A ten-year phaseout is the only honest version of what Prop 12 started: stop letting the worst actors undercut everyone else by treating animals as machinery. Independent farmers like me would finally compete on quality instead of racing the confinement model to the bottom.
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LifestyleSep 23, 2026
Should factory farming be phased out within ten years?
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Discussion (2)
Prop 12 is a weird example to celebrate. Pork prices in California rose and producers outside the state just built separate supply chains. It proved the market routes around rules, not that phaseouts work.
That is a fair criticism of one state's rule, but a national phaseout is a different animal. You cannot route around a federal ban the way you route around California.