California’s Proposition 12 was presented to voters as an animal confinement measure, but its broader impact has played out through interstate commerce and national food markets. Congress is now debating where state authority ends and national markets begin.

The issue before Congress is straightforward. With laws like Massachusetts Question 3, should one state be able to use its market to control how farmers in other states raise animals?

Many policymakers now believe America's children are facing a widespread, systemic health crisis. That belief appears in federal commission reports, congressional testimony and media coverage. Taken at face value, and without context, it has begun driving debate over the farm bill and broader agricultural policy on the conviction that the food system is failing children's health.

The data tell a more complicated story.