U.S. Rep. Steve King has reintroduced the Protect Interstate Commerce Act (PICA), a piece of legislation that failed to gain full congressional approval as part of the 2014 and 2018 farm bills.
King, R-Iowa, reintroduced PICA, formerly known as the King amendment, as a piece of standalone legislation in the 2019 session. The bill seeks to prevent states from engaging in the regulation of agricultural products that are lawfully produced or manufactured in other states. Examples of this would be laws in California, where eggs produced or sold there must come from hens that meet specific housing criteria.
California’s recently passed Proposition 12 calls for even stricter standards, where all eggs produced or sold in California must come from cage-free operations when the law becomes effective in 2021. Proposition 12 would call for similar standards for pigs raised for pork production and calves raised for veal production.
Iowa, the state King represents, is the nation’s largest egg producing state.
“PICA ends California’s unconstitutional attempt to regulate agricultural goods produced lawfully in the other 49 states,” King said in a statement. “Since the Supreme Court has declined to quickly hear state-backed challenges to unconstitutional laws like California’s Proposition 12, it is important that Congress address this issue with urgency by passing PICA and providing our producers with certainty that their goods will continue to be sold in the nation’s largest marketplace. Neither Iowa’s producers, nor the producers in the 48 other states that face the prospect of a California-sales ban, should be held hostage to the demands of California’s vegan lobby and California’s overreaching regulatory agencies.”
According to King, his amendment was included in the House-passed version of the two most recent farm bills, but was excluded from the final versions of both farm bills.
Support from other House members
The 2019 version of PICA, HR 272, has bipartisan support, as Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minnesota, is an original co-sponsor of the legislation. Peterson, the former ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, was earlier in 2019 named chairman of the agriculture committee.
Other co-sponsors include Rep. David Rouzer, R-North Carolina; Rep. Ron Estes, R-Kansas; Rep. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas; and Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio.
“We applaud Rep. King and the co-sponsors for not giving up in upholding the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution pertaining to egg production,” Ken Klippen, president of the National Association of Egg Farmers, said in an email.
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