Ron DeSantis ‘couldn’t live’ without meat, says ESG would bring a ‘food crisis’

In Iowa, Ron DeSantis pledged his fealty to animal flesh, and promised to stop environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) dead in its tracks before it caused a “food crisis.”

“You don’t have to worry about me with any beef or any meat,” DeSantis said. “We need meat. I mean, like I couldn’t live, I couldn’t go a week without it.”

DeSantis has said before that he was “not going to let anyone take away your meat” and told supporters he “couldn’t subsist if (he) didn’t have the good meat,” making Thursday’s message consistent with past remarks.

The Governor made the comments in response to a question from an Iowa farmer who objected to California’s standards for the treatment of hogs, which DeSantis framed as an example of the Left’s preferred “radical changes on how folks do their job in all sectors of agriculture and it will create a food crisis in this country if they do it.”

DeSantis addressed California’s Proposition 12, a law mandating sufficient room for breeding pigs, which he claimed Californians passed because they were too ignorant to read and comprehend what the ballot measure actually meant.

“So California does a ballot initiative called Prop 12. And it was something about how basically, you know, how you treat the hogs. And I mean, like the average person voting on that probably has no connection to any of this stuff and, but you know, they word it in a way to try to get a majority so they do it,” he said Thursday.

The California law holds “no person shall knowingly engage in a commercial sale within the state of whole pork meat for human food if the whole pork meat is the product of a breeding pig, or the product of the immediate offspring of a breeding pig, that was confined at any time during the production cycle for said product in an enclosure that fails to comply with all of the standards set forth in Chapter 10, Article 3, regarding Breeding Pigs.”

This includes pig meat brought in from out of state, meaning California markets would be closed to flesh from slaughtered pigs treated worse than state law requires.

California statute dictates that the “enclosure shall allow the breeding pig to lie down, stand up, fully extend limbs, and turn around freely,” with “a minimum of 24 square feet of usable floor space per breeding pig.” But that’s a bridge too far for the purveyors of porcine flesh.

The National Pork Producers Council has denounced the standards as “arbitrary” and “unconstitutional,” and DeSantis’ position accords with that industry group.

Ironically given the Governor’s take, more than two decades ago Florida passed a constitutional amendment stipulating that “no person shall confine a pig during pregnancy in a cage, crate or other enclosure, or tether a pregnant pig, on a farm so that the pig is prevented from turning around freely, except for veterinary purposes and during the pre-birthing period.”