Bringing home the bacon tops new California laws in 2022

FILE - A plate of bacon sits on the kitchen table on the Ron Mardesen farm, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021, near Elliott, Iowa. A 2018 voter-approved California ballot measure, to take effect, Jan. 1, 2022, set the nation's toughest living space standards for breeding pigs. Critics have called for putting off enforcement until 2024 for fear prices will rise and jobs will be lost. Mardesen already meets the California standards for the hogs he sells to specialty meat company Niman Ranch, which supported passage of Proposition 12 and requires all of its roughly 650 hog farmers to give breeding pigs far…