CALIFORNIA, USA, October 26, 2008: California’s Proposition 2, which goes before voters November 4, has the potential to eventually improve the lives of farm animals nationwide.
The ballot initiative focuses on what are considered the worst animal-confinement systems in factory farms. It requires that by 2015 farm animals be able to stand up, lie down, turn around and fully extend their limbs. No longer would veal calves and pregnant pigs be kept confined in two-foot-wide crates so that they cant even turn around; no longer would four or more laying hens live their lives in a space about the size of a file drawer.
Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University and a leading figure in the animal rights movement, says this is a historic ballot. If passed, it will affect more animals almost 20 million than any ballot measure has in U.S. history. Because California is the largest agricultural state in the country, and often a trend-setter on social issues, many experts predict that if Proposition 2 becomes law it will create a ripple effect.
Proposition 2 also marks a seminal moment for Wayne Pacelle, the first vegan to become president of the Humane Society of the United States. Since he became the head of the Humane Society four years ago, he has transformed the group from a kindly but timid protector of the nations dogs and cats into a savvy, unapologetically aggressive player. He has made the Humane Society the richest and most powerful animal-welfare group in the country, with its own in-house investigation, litigation and campaign teams.
It was Pacelle and his organization who shuttered the $100 million Westland/Hallmark Meat Company slaughterhouse in Chino, with the help of an undercover investigator wearing a hidden video camera. Over six weeks last year, the investigator filmed workers using chains to drag cows too sick or too injured to stand, using also other cruel practices.
Pacelle has made farm animals a top priority. Nine billion animals are killed for food every year, and most of them are confined in intensive conditions, he told his staff in 2004. It is the greatest abuse of animals that occurs on this planet. Cruelty is cruelty, he says, and its been our assumption that if decent people see images of these farm animals suffering, they will have a similar reaction.