Dive Brief:
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Massachusetts is delaying implementation for parts of its controversial animal housing law Question 3 as regulators work with the pork industry to address concerns over how the legislation applies to the transshipment of meat.
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Rules pertaining to transshipped pork, which is processed and intended for sale outside of the state, will be delayed until 60 days after regulations have been amended to resolve the legal issue, a Massachusetts District Court judge ruled. Noncompliant pork already in the supply chain as of Aug. 23 will also be exempt from Question 3 enforcement when the law goes into effect.
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The Massachusetts law, approved by voters in 2016, established housing requirements that added space for meat and poultry animals as a welfare measure and banned the selling of products noncompliant with the law, similar to California’s Proposition 12.
Dive Insight:
A group of four New England hospitality associations, along with the National Pork Producers Council and the Restaurant Law Center, challenged Question 3 last year, accusing it of disrupting interstate commerce. Almost all of the pork sold in Massachusetts is from other states, they argued.
The industry also says that Question 3 goes even further than California's Prop 12 because it would ban a bevy of goods that enter Massachusetts and are then distributed throughout New England. According to the National Pork Producers Council, the law would compromise an estimated $2 billion of transshipment pork.
The settlement, reached with the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General, would revise Question 3 so the pork rules do not apply to goods not intended to be sold in Massachusetts. The transshipment portion of the rules will not be enforced when Question 3 goes into effect Aug. 24 while the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources completes its rulemaking process.
“This settlement is a significant, positive outcome...because it gives restaurant owners and their suppliers the time they need to avoid significant supply disruptions so they don’t disappoint diners,” Angelo Amador, executive director of the Restaurant Law Center, said in a statement.
Triumph Foods and a group of Midwest pork producers have challenged the constitutionality of Question 3 and others like it.
California pushed back implementation of Prop 12 until Jan. 1, 2024, for pork already in the supply chain following a Supreme Court ruling affirming the law.
