Hinson stops in Mason City, talks about Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act
MASON CITY — North-central Iowa congresswoman Ashley Hinson stopped in Mason City on Monday afternoon to tour the Cargill Kitchen Solutions plant.
Hinson says she wanted to learn more about the producer of 155 million pounds of eggs annually, which are then turned into over 30 different egg products. “I’ve been a very big advocate of understanding that food does not come from a grocery store, it comes from chickens, it comes from pork, much of which is produced right here in Iowa. Five million eggs a day go through the Cargill plant here, and when I looked at the process of how they get those logistically into their plant, all the different products that they are producing, the food safety, the biosafety, just all of the different industry standards they have to meet, it was quite an eye-opening experience.”
Hinson has introduced the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act, or EATS, after the US Supreme Court upheld California’s law that bans the sale of pork in California from farms anywhere in the country that confine pregnant pigs in gestation crates for almost their whole lives. “There’s been kind of a war on breakfast coming out of the state of California with people trying to overmanage how we produce our food here in Iowa, so I’ve been a big proponent of educating myself so I can go out and share with my colleagues what we really need to be focused on in the food production space.”
Hinson says California lawmakers have no clue about agricultural production. “The liberal activists who have been pushing back against this bill don’t know the first thing about how food is actually made, and the industry standards, for instance what pork producers have, are in the best interest of animal health and welfare. Our farmers are the best stewards of their animals and their land, and that’s a big reason why I felt it was very important to introduce this piece of legislation.”
Hinson says the US Supreme Court in its ruling stated that Congress needed to do something to address this issue, and that’s why she introduced the bill.
23 (ashley4) “in Iowa”
(as above — “I look at this as an interstate commerce issue, the state of California overstepping its bounds in interstate commerce trying to regulate what’s happening in other states. I think it’s a dangerous creep actually. The unintended consequences I think come if we don’t do something. It will be manufacturing, it will be food. What’s to dictate that they can’t say ‘hey, we’re only going to buy pork from places that pay a certain amount per hour’. That may not work here in Iowa.”) Prior to her stop in Mason City, Hinson stopped to talk to the Charles City Rotary Club.
