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Modest Reform
Although this is an historic initiative, no one is saying Prop 2 will end all cruelty. Getting hens out of cages does not halt the egg-industry practice of killing male chicks ― hundreds of millions each year ― immediately after they’re hatched. It won’t prevent hens from being slaughtered once their production of eggs declines (usually within 18 months). Prop 2 won’t mean that male calves in California can’t be torn from their mothers hours after birth, or won’t end up as veal. Prop 2 won’t ban the use of farrowing crates in the state: sows inside corporate hog factories may still be confined within steel bars for two to three weeks as they nurse their piglets, only to be impregnated again and again until, their bodies exhausted, they are loaded unto a transport truck and slaughtered.
Prop 2 was always framed as “a modest reform” ― one that most consumers, especially those in trendsetting California, could support. But how will consumers across the country respond? And how will this law influence egg producers in other states, since the industry as a whole has been slow to adopt cage-free systems? To be sure, the success of the California initiative is going to spawn anti-cruelty legislation throughout the U.S. “There’s no doubt that banning battery cages in the largest agricultural state in the country will have reverberations throughout the nation,” said Paul Shapiro. “We’re likely to see progress beget more progress, and I think that in the coming months we’ll see a greater push for ending these extreme confinement systems all over the country.”
As we look for ways to feed an ever-growing global population, it’s time to acknowledge that turning over control of the food supply to a handful of corporations is neither sustainable nor safe. Factory farms treat animals as mere commodities, exploit farm workers and spew toxic waste into our waterways.[18] The streamlined, vertically integrated business model that has been so profitable for large-scale corporate agriculture has also cut out the family farmer, empowering factory farmers to develop U.S. farm policy and giving Big Ag the deep pockets needed to sell their lies to the public.
But as voters in California demonstrated this week, the lies don’t always work.
Mark Hawthorne is the author of Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism (www.strikingattheroots.com).
1. http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/20081008_tows_animals/4
2. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-animals21-2008oct21,0,2804205.story
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/opinion/09thu3.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
4. http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Content.asp?ContentID=259083
5. http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Content.asp?ContentID=263872
6. http://www.safecaliforniafood.org/node/33
7. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-chickens14-2008oct14,0,2315593.story
10. http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=BWK&date=20081020&id=9293949
