Carrie Curlee, a farmer and co-owner of Crest Point Farms in Nevada County, said like all farmers she has an affinity for the pigs she raises.
“I don’t name the ones that are going to go to market,” Curlee said. “I name the ones that are going to have babies and the boar.”
Curlee said she and her husband are conscious like all farmers about how they raise their 30 pigs and have made a conscious effort not to confine their pigs in any stage of their farming.
“We never have them closed up,” she said. “They’re always out in the fields. And so, we just want to have happy animals.”
Their methods are of even more importance now to their business as California’s Proposition 12 came into full effect on Jan. 1, meaning any pork sold in the state must come from a farm that allows breeding pigs at least 24 square feet of room, up from the usual 12 square feet, when female pigs are being held separately during pregnancy, and after piglets are just born.
Animal rights groups for years have said female pigs not having the ability to turn around in their current sized gestation crates as inhumane.
As the first state to have such standards for the $26 billion industry, it’s an important first step for setting standards, said Chris Holbein with the U.S. Humane Society.
“Prop. 12 being implemented in California is huge for farm animals,” Holbein said. “It really sets a new standard for other states to follow.”
The National Pork Producers Council reports 13% of domestic pork sales are to California.
And these changes will hurt and cost large-scale farmers millions who care just as much as small-scale farmers about their pigs, according to the council’s chief legal strategist Michael Formica.
“They’re not in any way shape or form rich,” Formica said. “They’re working class, hardworking, farm families, who are going to have a really difficult time.”
Several federal lawmakers have introduced legislation to curb the regulations in what they believe is California trying to regulate other state’s commercial practices.
For Curlee and her pigs, she said she’s seen a renewed surge in people concerned about where their meat comes from and farm practices.
“Not only meat that is clean,” she said. “But also that it has been raised in open air, raised in a way where they’re not being given any injections of any kind.”
And why she said her customers are happy to buy from her, not only for the taste, but for how the pigs spend their days before market.