Hear my prayer.

Restauranteurs in California are getting very concerned that a meat staple of many dishes, especially in breakfast-centred restaurants, is going to be gutted from their menus in January. Beginning then, much of the U.S. pork production will be prohibited from sale in the state. In Iowa, for example, a major pork supplier for California, it is estimated only four per cent of the state’s hog production operations will be able to ship into California.

In 2018, voters passed a measure mandating more space where pigs, laying hens and veal calves were raised. Pig producers have been loath to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars required to overhaul production barns and systems to meet a law they didn’t believe would stand. The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits one state from restraining trade among other states.

Many expected such a blatant move by California to set its own restrictive production standards and impose them on other states’ producers would be disallowed. But a lawsuit filed by the North American Meat Institute and joined by attorneys general in multiple states lost in California’s district court, lost at the very liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.