US pork producers lobby for delays in implementing Massachusetts animal welfare rule
The NPPC has submitted comments to the Massachusetts Attorney General's office urging a delay in implementing an animal welfare bill to give pork producers an opportunity to make the necessary changes.
11 August 2021
3 minute read
By: Massachusetts’ Question 3 is a 2016 ballot initiative which prohibits the sale of pork produced using certain production methods. In many ways, Question 3 is substantially similar to Proposition 12, a California ballot initiative which passed in 2018.
The Massachusetts initiative is set to begin on 1 January 2022, yet the commonwealth only recently issued proposed implementation rules—required by 1 January 2020.
“NPPC respectfully requests that the Attorney General’s Office suspend the implementation of Question 3 to ensure that farmers, and Massachusetts consumers of pork, are afforded the full two-year window between promulgation of final rules and regulations, and the effective date of the Act,” NPPC wrote. Therefore, NPPC urged the commonwealth to delay implementation by at least two years from when its regulations are finally promulgated.
