US government sues California over egg prices

By Dietrich Knauth

NEW YORK (Reuters) -President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday sued California over its regulation of eggs and chicken farms, saying that the state's anti-animal cruelty laws created "unnecessary red tape" that had raised egg prices throughout the U.S.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles federal court, argues that the federal Egg Products Inspection Act of 1970 pre-empts state laws related to eggs. The federal law authorizes the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services to regulate eggs in order to protect consumers' health and welfare, and it also requires "national uniformity" in egg safety standards, according to the Trump administration's lawsuit.

The California attorney general's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since the federal law's enactment, California has passed several laws to regulate eggs and chicken farms, including voter initiatives passed in 2008 and 2018 that prevent farmers from packing chickens together so tightly that a hen is unable to "lie down, stand up, fully extend its limbs, and turn around freely."

Those state laws aimed to reduce both animal cruelty and the risk of foodborne illness, but the U.S. government said in its lawsuit that only the federal government can regulate egg safety.

California can regulate chicken farms within the state, but it cannot impose additional requirements on eggs from other states that are sold within California, according to the lawsuit.

The California voter initiatives have survived previous challenges from farmers and other states.

Six states – Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky and Iowa – sued California over its egg regulations in 2014. The states who sued also argued that the federal law preempted California's laws, and they lost in both a federal district court and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 preserved one of the California voter initiatives, which was challenged in a lawsuit by pig farmers. The pig farmers had argued that California's 2018 ballot measure, which creates minimum space requirements for pigs and cows as well as chickens, impermissibly regulated out-of-state farmers.

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; editing by Leigh Jones and Sonali Paul)