At a hearing before the House Agriculture Committee last week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack repeated an earlier statement that he fears California’s Proposition 12, a law that says pork sold in the state has to come from animals raised under certain conditions, may be the beginning of state laws that make interstate trade difficult to manage.

The pork industry asked the Supreme Court to declare the law a violation of interstate trade, but the court said it was constitutional because it did not differentiate among producers, and that if there should be a change in the law it should come from Congress.

Vilsack first told the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture that Congress should act, but that he doubted Congress would have the political will. Asked about the issue at a Feb. 14 hearing by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., about his views, Vilsack repeated his statements.

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Vilsack did not endorse a specific piece of legislation, but Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Rep. Ashley Hinson, D-Iowa, have introduced the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act, also known as the EATS Act.

In the days after Vilsack’s testimony, a group called Moms for America has come out against the EATS Act, and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has written an article in The Hill against it.

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When the Supreme Court met last May, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the court’s primary opinion, “While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list.”

When testifying before the House Agriculture Committee, Vilsack said, “This is a really complicated problem, and everybody wants a simple answer.”

He compared the use of state legislation regarding pork to the initial attempt to govern the United States under the Articles of Confederation in 1777. The federal government was so weak that in 1787 the Continental Congress passed the current Constitution.

Massachusetts has passed its own pork law and Vilsack said other states might join California and Massachusetts in writing their own standards for pork and other foods.

“I think we’re going to have to get to a point where that chaos becomes really prevalent and really understood not just by the farmers. Maybe then the politics of it become such that we’ll do what James Madison and his colleagues did — creating some kind of standard here that provides more stability.”

But at the present time, Vilsack told the state agricultural commissioners “I don’t think there’s the political capacity up there to do much about it,” and told the House Agriculture Committee the same thing.

On Friday, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, an elected Republican, wrote in The Hill he doesn’t favor Prop 12, but also considers the EATS Act an interference with states rights.

“While I don’t agree with Prop 12, I’ll defend to my dying day California’s right to self-determination, and any state’s ability to use its constitutional authority as that state’s citizens best see fit,” Miller wrote.

On Monday, Moms for America sent congressional leaders a letter in opposition to the EATS bill. The group describes itself as “rooted on the principles of liberty and virtue our nation was founded on, and focused on promoting these principles, values, and virtues in the home and family, particularly through the women and mothers of America.”

“If the farm bill includes the EATS Act or any language that nullifies state and local agriculture laws that keep American family farmers in business, we will have no choice but to actively oppose the passage and enactment of the legislation and we will engage our grassroots army to help defeat it,” said Kimberly Fletcher, president of Moms for America.

“Ensuring that the Chinese and other multinational conglomerates aren’t allowed to further consolidate food production in the U.S. is a critical component of our legislative agenda, and this federal power grab by the swamp must be defeated at all costs.”

The Organization for Competitive Markets, a group that opposes the EATS bill, distributed the Moms for America news release, with references to the Miller article.

“It doesn’t get any swampier in Washington, D.C., than Tom Vilsack,” said Marty Irby, a Washington lobbyist who is secretary of the Organization for Competitive Markets board, said in an email to The Hagstrom Report on Monday,

“President Biden’s secretary of agriculture has consistently picked winners and losers in the marketplace and put multinational conglomerates like the Chinese-owned Smithfield, Brazil-based JBS, and others before our hard-working American family farmers who are dying on the vine,” Irby said.

“The secretary should have supported Prop 12, a measure that was enacted by a vote of the people, but instead he showed his true colors once again, and they aren’t red, white and blue.”