I’m really excited — there’s a petition on right now to put a cruelty-free farming initiative on the ballot next year! It’s too bad the initiative won’t go on the ballot this year, but they do need the signatures right now.
If you care about farm animal conditions, please go out and find a petition, and sign it in favor of putting the initiative on the ballot. I think if you’re an ethical person at any level, this should appeal to you. If you’re a vegan, I hope you’ll support this bill even though it doesn’t do away with farming all together — it still will make farm animals suffer less. If you’re a vegetarian, I hope you’ll support it because you’re obviously already against animal suffering, and it will make any egg dishes you eat more humanely obtained, and if you’re an omnivore, I hope you’ll support it because you can be an ethical/cruelty-minimizing omnivore — if you are supporting killing and then eating animals, but you are only eating animals that were killed, yes, but tortured, no, you’re being a much, much better person. Really. (And if you’re an unethical person who just doesn’t care about animal suffering, what can I say that will convince you? That animal products tastes better when they haven’t lived lives in tiny spaces? Wolfgang Puck, the celebrity chef, thinks so.)
The initiative is run by Californians for Humane Farm, which is campaigning to put the California Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act on the November 2008 ballot. It should end keeping pregnant pigs in gestation crates, calves in veal crates, and hens in battery cages. Gestation crates and veal crates do not allow pigs and calves enough room to even turn around, and battery cages have a footprint of less than a sheet of normal-sized paper, which is far too small for a bird the size of a chicken. Dr. Temple Grandin, one of the people I admire most, and a truly amazing designer of humane “livestock systems,” likens putting pigs in gestation crates for the four months they are pregnant to asking a sow to live in an airline seat, and calls for gestation crates to be phased out. The European Union, Florida, and Arizona have already banned gestation crates due to their inherent cruelty. Veal crates are especially inhumane because they take baby calves when they would normally still be nursing away from their mothers, tether the calves in crates too narrow for them to turn around in, and keep them that way for four months before they are killed. The European Union and Arizona have already outlawed veal crates, and Wolfgang Puck refuses to buy veal from producers who crate their calves. Europe is in the process of making battery cages illegal (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have already banned battery cages). Several well-known retailers are now using cage-free eggs only, including Burger King, Hardees, Carl’s Jr., and Ben & Jerry’s. Whole Foods only sells cage-free eggs, and Trader Joes has converted all its private line eggs to cage-free. The Google, AOL, Yahoo, and NIKE employee cafeterias only have cage-free eggs. So jump on the bandwagon! It’s not only fringe lunatics who are supporting this bill. I swear.
The California Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act is endorsed by The Humane Society of the United States, Farm Sanctuary, Animal Acres, Animal Cruelty Investigations, Animal Legal Defense Fund, Animal Place, Animal Protection and Rescue League, Animal Welfare Advocacy, Defenders of Wildlife, East Bay Animal Advocates, Marin Humane Society, Peninsula Humane Society, Sacramento SPCA, San Francisco SPCA, SPCA LA, United Poultry Concerns, The Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights,
Paula Kislak, DVM, Armaiti May, DVM, Bill Niman, California Cattle Rancher, Wellington Vineyards, The Food Empowerment Project, Bill McKibben, and Julia Butterfly Hill.
So please, sign the petition to stop gestation crates, veal crates, and battery farming (and stop buying products that are raised in inhumane crates!). Unfortunately, the state requires handwritten signatures, so you can’t support the petition by email or signing up online, which really annoys me because I hate doing handwritten things. Interact with people? I’d much prefer to interact with a computer. But I am definitely going to go out and find a petition to sign — the state requires 650,000 handwritten signatures before the initiative can be put on the ballot. I kind of wish they would mention where the petition people will be hanging out waiting for signatures — I can only guess in front of Whole Foods, since that’s where I usually am attacked by the petition-people. But I will definitely go find a petition to sign if it will help prevent farm animal cruelty in California. (This is a unprecedented for me — usually I avoid petition-people like the plague.)
There are 20,000 pregnant pigs in California, 19 million egg-laying hens, and 20,000 calves in California every year (actually I’m guessing on the number of calves — there are 1 million calves killed and sold as veal in this country according to Californians for Humane Farms , if you divide by 52 you get 19,230) — so if you support this ballot, you’ll be removing nearly 19,040,000 living, breathing, feeling creatures from horrendous conditions and lifetimes of misery.
Have you voted for your favorite cruelty-free brands yet? Please vote here.
Categories : cruelty free, humane farming
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gwen sutherland kaiser
October 19th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
hey emily, thanks for the link!!!! i am truly honored to be listed with such prestigious company…
Emily
October 20th, 2007 at 1:21 am
You’re very welcome! It’s always nice to add another good blog to my blogroll
Ellie
October 24th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Can anything be somewhat cruelty free? Isn’t it really a question of whether something is cruel or not?
It’s inherently cruel to farm living beings. There’s no way that breeding, raising, and killing living beings can be humane.
Some farming methods may seem less cruel, but they don’t make much difference to the animals. For one
example, “cage-free” hens are still bred in hatcheries, where their brothers are promptly killed. After a year or two, egg laying hens are “spent”, and killed just as surely as those confined in battery cages.
Other animals fare no better with so-called “compassionate” farming. And that’s to saying nothing about the impossibility of enforcing regulations.
I care very much about animals, and I know I would not be serving their interests if I compromised their need to not be exploited. The “compassion” and “humane” labels are really marketing tools for the industry.
Please think about the long term affects of activism
which purports to make animal use “humane”. If it can be supported by animal users, it’s unlikely to be much good for animals.
Emily
October 25th, 2007 at 2:11 am
I want to start by saying thank you for commenting – I think you’re obviously a person who really cares about animals and I think that’s wonderful! I wish I knew more people like you.
However, I disagree with you about most of your points. First, I think things can be “somewhat” cruelty-free. I really do. I think there is a spectrum of cruelty-free-ness – at one end there’s torturing and killing animals. At the other end, there’s not killing them at all. On a zero-to-one scale it would go something like this:
0 – tortures and kills animals (factory farming, animal abusers, people who run tests on animals)
.33 – not torturing animals, but killing them quickly (humanely raised meat)
.66 – not torturing animals, not killing them (humanely raised dairy cows, cage-free chickens)
1 – not buying any animal products whatsoever (vegan)
Second, I think that while it may be inherently cruel to farm living beings, there’s nothing I can do to stop people from doing it. One million calves were killed this year for veal, and there’s nothing you or I can do to stop that. Are you saying I should oppose farm reform because it is inherently wrong when I could support an initiative that would make the lives of the one million baby cows that will be slaughtered next year slightly better? I’m sorry, it’s not a contest for me. I can’t bear the thought of not supporting a bill that would make their lives better in the smallest degree.
Similarly, according to ChoiceUSA.net (http://www.choiceusa.net/cconcerns_DA.htm), 10 billion chickens, cows, pigs, and sheep are killed each year for food in USA factory farms. If I can help support something that would make the lives of those 10 billion chickens, cows, pigs and sheep slightly better, I certainly will, and that’s why I’m supporting the humane farming initiative. I feel like your argument that I shouldn’t support the humane farming initiative it is similar to the argument people make that the Geneva conventions shouldn’t be supported. Is a prisoner of war camp with torture worse than a prisoner of war camp without torture? Yes. Being locked up = bad. Being locked up and tortured = much worse.
Third, while I agree with you that “cage-free”-ness is not ideal — that cage-free hens are still bred in hatcheries where their brothers are killed, and cage free hens are killed when they are three years old instead of living out their nine-year span — I disagree that this is a necessity of farming. Farms COULD let the hens live out their years. It would be humane, yet still be “farming.” I’d LOVE to buy those eggs, actually. I think it would just call for more stringent “humane” labeling. Also, I think there are other people out there, like me, who would also – at least, the people who commented on my Clover post would: http://www.livingcrueltyfree.com/2007/06/10/clover-milk-certified-by-the-american-humane-association/)
Fourth, I STRONGLY disagree with your statement that other animals fare no better with so-called “compassionate” farming. Sows that are enabled to turn around during the six months they are gestating are obviously better off than sows that are not able to turn around for six months. It’s a quality of life issue for me. Can you imagine not being able to turn around for six months? Calves that similarly are allowed to turn around for six months before being slaughtered are also better off, to my mind, than calves that are not allowed to turn around. Chickens that are allowed to spread their wings are better off than chickens who are confined to tiny cages for the six months they are alive.
Fifth, I disagree with your statement that “compassionate” and “humane” are just marketing tools for the industry. Are you saying I should tell my omnivore friends (of which I have many) that they shouldn’t try to buy humanely-raised veal that was allowed to turn around for the six months of its short life – that my friends should instead buy veal that was locked in a tiny crate for six months of its life? I’m sorry, but I see a difference. A big difference.
Sixth, 1.4% of the U.S. population is vegan, and 2.3% is vegetarian, according to the VRG’s 2003 poll: http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2006issue4/vj2006issue4poll.htm
This suggests that 96.3% of the U.S. population is eating meat and dairy products from factory farms (and another 2.3% is eating dairy products and eggs from factory farms). Nationmaster.com estimates that there are 301,139,947 people in the U.S. (http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us-united-states) This means that there are 289,997,769 meat and dairy eaters out there (96.3% of 301,139,947 is 289,997,769). And I don’t think those 289 million people are going to go vegan any time soon. This is despite the fact that many wonderful vegetarian/vegan institutions have been urging people to go vegetarian/vegan for the past thirty years. Those institutions really haven’t had much success (though the success they’ve had is fantastic! I wish they’d have more!). I think making the world a better place, if not the ideal place, for the 10 billion animals those 289 million people are going to eat is a far, far more effective improvement in living standards for animals than just urging people to give up farming all together.
I doubt any of these arguments have swayed you from your anti-humane-farming-initiative point of view (and that’s fine with me, by the way – I think you’re entitled to your own opinion), but I just wanted to clarify why I think some things can be “somewhat” cruelty-free and why I think the California Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act is a good thing. I am honored that a strongly pro-animal-rights person like yourself cares to comment on my blog – sometimes I forget that there are strongly pro-animal-rights people out there. I live in a world full of uncaring omnivores. You would think the San Francisco bay area would be more animal-friendly, but it’s too much of a food-town to give up eating them, apparently.
Ellie
October 25th, 2007 at 8:29 am
I appreciate your reply, Emily, as perhaps we can talk more about these issues.
While I agree there are degrees of cruelty, a huge and far reaching problem with campaigns for “humane” farming is that they are not presented as less cruel. Instead, they are presented as the solution for cruelty to animals, as if these animals could have happy lives. This has long term consequences for the non-human beings we care about, because it sells the idea that farming can be compassionate.
To begin with, people invision “free-range” farming as chickens and other animals walking freely across a barnyard. The reality is very different. In the photos I’ve seen of “free-range” farms, chickens did not have enough space to flap their wings. And importantly, when chickens and other farm animals are not confined, this can lead to other problems, such as dominance and aggression.
I don’t think any human or non-human would be comfortable being continually pregnant. People who’ve who know farm animals can tell you they miss their young. What happens to the male calves at Clover Farms? They are sold to the veal industry, and within 6 months they’ll be dead. Giving animals room to walk is not going to change that, and it may create other problems for them as well.
Farming is a business based on profit. Allowing farm animals to live their full life spans would be very expensive, and it’s unrealistic, I think, to believe this will happen.
I think my position is comparable to the abolition of slavery (not the Geneva Convention). History is telling in that reforms did not create freedom.
I know you’re sincere, and I’m asking you to think about the long term consequences of promoting animal use as “humane”: When consumers are led to think animals are treated with compassion (which is essential to making profit on “humane” farming), they can eat and use animals with a free conscience. This is not only true for omnivores– many vegetarians have resumed eating meat because they now believe animals are treated kindly. Trading small benefits for a clear message against animal use results in encouraging the use of animal products, which does not help animals at all.
Emily
October 27th, 2007 at 12:25 am
I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree about these issues. I admire and respect people who promote campaigns for “humane” farming because I think “humane” farming is humane. Maybe not absolutely, completely, perfectly humane, but then it isn’t claiming to be. But I respect your right to your own opinion.
Pearl
October 27th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Emily, you wrote:
I think making the world a better place, if not the ideal place, for the 10 billion animals those 289 million people are going to eat is a far, far more effective improvement in living standards for animals than just urging people to give up farming all together.
That is *EXACTLY* the attitude I was applauding you for in my last communication with you. Demanding 100% and nothing less is only going to turn off the omnivores (of which I am one). Persuading them/us/me to gear their purchases and lives toward less suffering for the animals that *are* farmed, *does* have a much greater chance of success. If you’ll recall, I landed at your blog not because I was surfing vegetarian sites because I was researching this issue of more humane practices in farming. The impetus, in my case, did not come from any conversations with any vegetarians/vegans, nor with any pitches that I ’should’ do it, but because I wanted to. It came completely from within, and I’m certain I’m not the only one.
But yes, this was the point I was trying to make in my last communication with you. Stand up in front of those 289,997,769 meat and dairy eaters and demand 100% pure hardline, and you’re not likely to get much at all. In fact, you *might* just tick them off to the point that they’ll act *against* your wishes our of anger/spite. Animals with at least a little more kindness in their lives: zip. And possibly worse, if you’ve triggered their ’spite’ reaction. But get up there and ask for 50% more kindness, help address those issues of availability/labeling/cost/etc that I mentioned in my last communication, and you just might get somewhere. Animals with at least a little more kindness in their lives: Certainly more than zip.
Emily
October 27th, 2007 at 1:35 am
Thanks Pearl! I’m so glad you agree with me that omnivores might hate being told to give up all meat and dairy products 100% right now. It just seems unlikely to me that they’re going to revolutionize their eating habits when they could instead be encouraged to take incremental steps.
That’s interesting that you note that you weren’t convinced by any vegetarians/vegans to start supporting humane farming — I hadn’t really thought about it, but I started to buy humanely-farmed foods totally on my own as well. Amazingly enough, ten years ago I had four vegan friends (I lived in Santa Cruz), and despite the fact that they subjected me to numerous you-must-go-vegan pitches, I thought they were crazy and I continued to eat factory-farmed meat at every meal. Which I guess supports your point that being told you “should” go vegan is fairly ineffective. It wasn’t until two years ago that I decided I couldn’t support factory farming, because I started seeing cage-free eggs in the store, and I read up on how miserable life is for farm animals.
Also I’m pleased you’d like to see farm animals have a little more kindness in their lives — me too! I think they need all the help they can get.
Pearl
October 27th, 2007 at 1:41 am
(And one more thing. Does this work? Well, I’m an ‘animal user’, and I followed your links to that leaping bunny site, and now I’m sitting here tracking down my nearest ‘Body Shop’ store, which it turns out, isn’t too far away from that Whole Foods store I was telling you about. So does your non-abrasive approach work? You tell me.)
Emily
October 27th, 2007 at 1:48 am
Excellent! Another convert to the cruelty-free cosmetics/household products cause . . !
Ooh, sorry about the “animal-user” phrase. That is a bit impolite.
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