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Producers Association. Henoted that Yosemite Foods has been processing fairhogs formore than20years andwants to continue offering the service to help fairs and youth exhibitors. After saying the company may need to limit the amount of resalehogs itwouldac- cept,hefollowedupwithaclarification:“We are just trying to find a solution that works for all. Itmight not look the sameas it has in yearspast becauseof Prop. 12.” Producers, processors, agriculture
teachers and farmorganizations agree the new regulation in its current formwould disproportionately affect socioeconom- ically disadvantaged students who may not have themeans or the connections to market their animals to private buyers. “The kids that rely on other companies to buy their hogs and resell them, they are the ones that are going to be hurt by Prop. 12,” Reeder said. For fairs dealing with hundreds of an- imals, “it’s potentially going to be a real
challenge this year trying to navigate a lot of theunknowns,” saidShannonDouglass, first vice president of the California Farm Bureau,whoalsoservesasaboarddirector for the Glenn County Fair. That includes trying to track animals fromeach individ- ual exhibitor and making sure they have proper documentation, “especially when we’re still trying to figure out the regs and how to properly follow them,” she added. “I have not seen a fair that has a solid plan of how they’re going to deal with it,” Douglass said. “Essentially, they’ve been waiting toseewhat thenewregsmight be.” Agricultural organizations including the California FarmBureau and other stake- holders have asked CDFA to exempt all junior livestock fromProposition12 rules. Patton said agricultural teachers would be willing to work with their students and fairs to provide a solution—“anything we cando to alleviate that paperwork burden on the processors.” BecausetheMontereyCountyFairisheld in late August and the end of September, DeputyManager Chris Garmon said, “we have time to feel things out and get the wordout down the pipeline.” “It’s going to be a lot of paperwork, but it’s not going to be as bad as it sounds,” Garmon said. “But then again, my fair doesn’t havea lot of pigs,”unlike fairs such as Kern County, which typically receives more than 300, he noted. CDFA late last month said it was re- viewing comments on itsdraft regulations and expected to complete the review in mid-January. CDFA spokesman Steve Lyle said the department “is working to complete the processasquicklyaspossible,”adding, “we continue toevaluatehow(the regulations) will apply tostateorcounty fairexhibitions, 4-Hprograms and similar exhibitions.” Students typicallypurchase theirproject pigs frombreeders 100 to120days prior to the fair. If they plan to exhibit ananimal in a spring fair, they likelypurchased thepig- lets last fall, whichmeans those pigs don’t fall underProposition12rules, Pattonsaid. Pigs born in 2022will need to comply. Because theSacramentoCountyFairoc- curs inMay, students exhibitingegg layers this year are theoneswhowill needpaper- work certifying their hens are Proposition 12-compliant, saidMike Albiani, agricul- ture teacher at Elk Grove High School. As board chairman of the fair, which he said usually sends 250 to 300 resale hogs to processors, he acknowledged the “big unknown” is what the fair will do if it can’t get the hogs processed. But fair staff won’t need toworry about that until next year. For later fairs that will be receiving hogs born in 2022, “there is some trepidation about where this whole thing is going to end up,” Patton said. “I get phone calls frommy teachers ev- ery day…because they’re starting to plan for purchasing animals or animals are starting to come in,” he said. “They want to knowwhat the endgame is before they make this financial commitment to these projects. They want to make sure they’re going to have an outlet for them.” (ChingLeeisanassistanteditorofAgAlert. Shemaybe contactedat clee@cfbf.com.)
hogs sold to private buyers who use cus- tom slaughter and keep the meat for per- sonal consumption. For processors such as Stockton-based Yosemite Foods, which buys a large num- ber of hogs each year from fairs, having to keep track of each certificate—and sup- plying them to downstreambuyers—cre- ates “a logistical nightmare,” said Chance Reeder, plant superintendent for thecom- pany and president of the California Pork
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42 Ag Alert January 26, 2022
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