How much are Californians paying for Prop 12? Consumers investigate
Miranda Harrington
Critics of Prop 12 claimed that the new animal welfare standards would drive increased food prices and product shortages. After the law has gone into effect, it’s become clear that these claims were nothing more than industry fearmongering.
California’s Farm Animal Confinement Initiative—also known as Proposition 12—is the strongest animal protection law in the United States. With Prop 12 on the books, California consumers could feel confident that, after it went into effect, their purchasing habits were no longer contributing to one of the most egregious forms of animal cruelty: intensive confinement. While millions of consumers and animals alike stood to benefit from these new standards, some in the industry claimed that consumers would pay the price for Prop 12 with unprecedented food shortages and price spikes. Now that the law is in effect, consumers set out to observe whether these “doomsday” predictions came true.
Prop 12’s passage came as a shock to the meat industry—which has a long history of using its political power and influence to dodge even the most basic regulations. As the deadline for implementing Prop 12 approached, the meat and egg industries fought hard to overturn the basic animal welfare protections—going as far as filing multiple lawsuits claiming that the law was unconstitutional. They also tried to win over the court of public opinion, with industry publications issuing grave warnings about upcoming price increases and product shortages as a direct result of Prop 12. However, none of these attempts proved successful, and California implemented Prop 12 at the beginning of this year.
With the changes in effect, shoppers across the state set out to investigate whether the industry’s ominous predictions of shortages, significant price increases, and chaos had actually come to pass. Together, these citizen investigators documented the inventory and prices of egg and pork products at over 150 California grocery stores during the early months of Prop 12’s implementation. Thanks to their efforts compiling months of data, we can finally whether consumers are really paying the price for Prop 12’s new animal welfare standards.
What is Prop 12?
During the 2018 election, an initiative to ban the confinement of farm animals “in a cruel manner” appeared on the statewide ballot in California. The initiative introduced a two-fold approach to preventing the intensive confinement of animals. First, it would establish minimum space requirements for all calves raised for veal, breeding pigs, and egg-laying hens within the state. It would also ban the sale of “(a) veal from calves, (b) pork from breeding pigs, and (c) eggs from hens when the animals are confined to areas below minimum square-feet requirements”—meaning that any animal product sold in California would have to come from a farm which complies with Prop 12’s standards, even if the product is an import from another state.
The initiative passed with 63% of voters in favor. Its passage was a landmark victory for millions of chickens, pigs, and calves, who are rarely afforded even the most basic protections against cruelty.
What changes went into effect with Prop 12?
Passing the initiative was the first step. The next challenge was implementing it. There was a three-year gap between the passage and implementation of Prop 12—partially because the state wanted to give farmers time to update their facilities with new space requirements, and partially because the meat and egg industries fought tooth and nail to try and get the law struck down in court before it went into effect.
Now that the law is fully in effect, as of 2022, farms must comply with several minimum requirements outlined by Prop 12 in order for their products to be sold in California. These requirements vary for each species and their individual needs, but all of them are meant to protect the welfare and autonomy of each animal raised for food.
Chickens: Egg-laying hens must have a minimum of one square foot of floor space and bedded floors. This requirement prevents farms from keeping hens in tight, wire battery cages, which cause physical trauma and mental anguish in chickens.
Pigs: The pork industry confines breeding sows—female pigs whose primary function is to give birth to litters of baby pigs—in gestation crates. These crates can be restrictive to the point where mother pigs cannot turn or move more than a step. While Prop 12 does not outlaw the use of these crates entirely, it does require that pigs have at least 24 square feet of floor space, allowing them a more comfortable amount of space to move around and express their natural behaviors.
Cows: While Prop 12 doesn’t impact all cows raised for food, it does establish specific standards for housing calves in the veal industry, who are typically subjected to some of the most intensive forms of confinement. Under the law, each calf must receive 43 square feet of floor space, which is roughly equivalent to the size of a king-sized mattress. While still not enough space to run freely or exercise, this requirement ensures that calves can at least lie down comfortably.
Overall, experts predict that these protections would spare nearly a million pigs and 40 million egg-laying hens from “cruel confinement” each year. However, the industry argues that “cruel confinement” is the necessary cost of their products. While it’s true that it would cost time, money, and effort to retrofit existing facilities for Prop 12 compliance, many of Prop 12’s industry opponents made exaggerated claims about how much of this cost would be passed down to the consumer—one industry-sponsored study went as far as to claim that Prop 12 would cause half of the pork supply in California to “disappear,” driving a 50% price increase in pork products.
After modeling supply and cost, researchers from UC Davis called the “pork price panic” resulting from Prop 12’s imminent implementation “unwarranted.” But, now, we don’t have to just rely on models. Since Prop 12 has been in effect, consumers can actually see whether Prop 12 has impacted their prices just by going to their local grocery stores. And, that’s precisely what a dedicated group of consumer investigators did.
Shoppers visited 158 California grocery stores during the last quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 to document how full the pork and egg shelves were before and after the full implementation of Prop 12 on January 1 (they excluded veal from the study, as Prop 12's veal standards already went into place two years ago). They used a scale of one to five to score the “shelf fullness” in each picture. Then, they compared the price of the most affordable cage-free eggs from both quarters. This provides us with a snapshot of how inventory and prices have (or haven’t) changed as a result of Prop 12’s implementation.
Did Prop 12 cause food shortages?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: To get an idea of the pork supply, shoppers gathered and compared data from 158 grocery store locations—from big names like Costco and Target, to local chains like Ralphs and Raley’s. Almost every store had the same amount of pork products on their shelves before and after January 1, with 86% of the stores receiving the same shelf fullness score or higher in January. That’s right—some stores actually had more pork products on their shelves after Prop 12 was implemented.
When they analyzed the egg selection at 139 grocery stores using the same method, shoppers also found that there were no dramatic differences in the egg supply. 105 (76%) of these stores had the same shelf fullness score or higher in January, and 87% received a fullness score within one point of their December score. Overall, a vast majority of stores had the same amount of eggs on their shelves after January 1.
Did Prop 12 increase food prices?
No, consumer data did not show that Prop 12’s implementation had any impact on food prices. Consumers documented the prices of the most affordable cage-free eggs on store shelves in both December and January 2022. The average price per egg in 2021 was $0.26, and the price stayed the same after Prop 12 went into full effect. The aggregate data shows a price change of 1.04% between the two months, which translates to less than a penny per egg.
Gathering data on pork prices was more difficult in the context of this study—while it’s relatively easy for a citizen investigator to compare the prices of cage-free egg cartons, the variety of product types and price points makes it difficult to capture an accurate snapshot of how pork prices might have changed at the grocery store. However, their data does capture the fact that there was no major impact on the pork supply after the implementation of Prop 12. Since the predicted price increases would stem from product shortages, and no shortages occurred, it’s reasonable to assume that price increases didn’t occur, either. Data from the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) supports the idea that there were no significant price increases in meat, poultry, eggs, or fish for consumers in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA area during the implementation of Prop 12.
What this means for Prop 12
Instead of relying on computer models or industry-funded studies, this project made use of citizen science to see the real-world impacts of Prop 12, right at the grocery store. Their crowdsourced data shows that the doomsday predictions of shortages and price increases simply did not manifest. For consumers, the changes brought on by Prop 12 were negligible: grocery store shelves held the same amount of product, and the price of cage-free eggs changed 1%. That’s it.
However, for millions of animals suffering the physical and mental anguish of life in a cage, Prop 12 is nothing short of life-changing. Almost one million mother pigs will no longer be trapped in crates so tight, they can’t even turn around. Tens of millions of egg-laying hens will finally be able to spread their wings, no longer crammed in suffocatingly tight wire cages with a dozen other birds.
Although animals still have to endure exploitation on factory farms, the most influential state in the US is finally taking action to protect their basic well-being against the meat industry’s cruelty. For this reason, Prop 12 is a huge step in the right direction for farmed animals.
And, the movement to end cage confinement is growing far beyond California. Changemakers around the world are taking action to call on companies to eliminate cruel cages from their supply chain entirely—and over 400 corporations have listened. A world where no animal has to spend her life suffering in a cage is within reach. Join our movement to demand an end to cage confinement.
