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Will 'free the chickens' crusade spread?
Freshly-laid eggs being collected for delivery to the local packing plant.
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Kai Ryssdal: According to the Department of Agriculture, there were 333 million egg-laying chickens in this country as of October 1. Almost 20 million of them here in California. Thanks to Proposition 2 on the California ballot last night -- which passed overwhelmingly -- those chickens and some other animals grown for food will have better, if not necessarily longer, lives.
Laws requiring better treatment for calves and sows has already passed in Florida and Arizona. Marketplace's Sarah Gardner reports on what could be the start of a national campaign to phase out animal confinement practices on factory farms.
Sarah Gardner: Before this election, probably few Californians ever gave much thought to the hens that lay their morning eggs. That changed this year when the Humane Society and its supporters put Prop 2 on the state ballot.
Tape of Ellen DeGeneres: Animals raised for food are crammed into cages so small they can't move. That's not right. Good news is we can change it.
TV celeb Ellen DeGeneres was an outspoken Prop 2 supporter. The initiative essentially outlaws conventional egg production in California. That means housing hens in stacked wire enclosures, often eight to a cage. Prop 2 doesn't ban cages, per se, but demands enough space so hens can spread their wings and turn around. Humane Society president Wayne Pacelle says Californians sent the farm industry a message.
Wayne Pacelle: These factory farms where animals are treated like commodities or objects or things is no longer acceptable, and the industry's going to have to better align its practices with public sentiment.
Pacelle's group intends to take this campaign to other states. He believes the California victory may persuade national retailers to eventually go cage-free. Costco and Safeway are already moving in that direction. But critics today called the Prop 2 campaign "emotionally manipulative." And Mitch Head at United Egg Producers insists food costs will go up.
Mitch Head: We think that once it takes effect and people see that there are perhaps shortages of locally produced eggs or that egg prices go up dramatically in California, other states might be a lot more reluctant to go down this path.
The European Union already is. Janice Swanson, an animal welfare expert at Michigan State, says farmers there are trying everything from barn-like aviaries to bigger cages and . . .
Janice Swanson: There's still a lot of bugs to be worked out in these alternative systems.
Bugs like a higher mortality rate among cage-free birds. But farmers in California have some time to work out those kind of bugs. Prop 2 won't take effect until 2015.
I'm Sarah Gardner for Marketplace.
Funny they mentioned that animals in agriculture are not to be treated as commodities anymore. What are they to be? I though beef, pork, and poultry where all considered agriculture commidities. That is why they even are traded as commodities on the Exchanges.
7 Things You Didn’t Know About HSUS
(the Humane Society of the United States)
1. The Humane Society of the United States(HSUS) is a “humane society†in name only, since it doesn’t operate a single pet shelter or pet adoption facility anywhere in the United States. During 2006, HSUS contributed only 4.2 percent of its budget to organizations that operate hands-on dog and cat shelters. In reality, HSUS is a wealthy animal-rights lobbying organization (the largest and richest on earth) that agitates for the same goals as PETA and other radical groups.
2. Beginning on the day of NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s2007 dog fighting indictment, HSUS raised money online with the false promise that it would “care for the dogs seized in the Michael Vick case.†The New York Times later reported that HSUS wasn’t caring for Vick’s dogs at all. And HSUS president Wayne Pacelle told the Times that his group recommended that government officials “put down†(that is, kill) the dogs rather than adopt them out to suitable homes. HSUS later quietly altered its Internet fundraising pitch.
3. HSUS’s senior management includes a former spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front(ALF), a criminal group designated as “terrorists†by the FBI. HSUS president Wayne Pacelle hired John “J.P.†Goodwin in 1997, the same year Goodwin described himself as “spokesperson for the ALF†while he fielded media calls in the wake of an ALF arson attack at a California veal processing plant. In 1997, when asked by reporters for a reaction to an ALF arson fire at a farmer’s feed co-op in Utah (which nearly killed a family sleeping on the premises), Goodwin replied, “We’re ecstatic.†That same year, Goodwin was arrested at a UC Davis protest celebrating the 10-year anniversary of an ALF arson at the university that caused $5 million in damage. And in 1998, Goodwin described himself publicly as a “former member of ALF.â€
4.HSUS raised a reported $34 million in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, supposedly to help reunite lost pets with their owners. But comparatively little of that money was spent for its intended purpose. Louisiana’s Attorney General shuttered his 18-month-long investigation into where most of these millions went, shortly after HSUS announced its plan to contribute $600,000 toward the construction of an animal shelter on the grounds of a state prison. Public disclosures of the disposition of the $34 million in Katrina-related donations add up to less than $7 million.
5. After gathering undercover video footage of improper animal handling at a Chino, CA slaughterhouse during November of 2007, HSUS sat on its video evidence for three months, even refusing to share it with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. HSUS’s Dr. Michael Greger testified before Congress that the San Bernardino County (CA) District Attorney’s office asked the group “to hold on to the information while they completed their investigation.†But the District Attorney’s office quickly denied that account, even declaring that HSUS refused to make its undercover spy available to investigators if the USDA were present at those meetings. Ultimately, HSUS chose to release its video footage at a more politically opportune time, as it prepared to launch a livestock-related ballot campaign in California. Meanwhile, meat from the slaughterhouse continued to flow into the U.S. food supply for months.
6. According to a 2008 Los Angeles Times investigation, less than 12 percent of money raised for HSUS by California telemarketers actually ends up in HSUS’s bank account. The rest is kept by professional fundraisers. And if you exclude two campaigns run for HSUS by the “Build-a-Bear Workshop†retail chain, which consisted of the sale of surplus stuffed animals (not really “fundraisingâ€), HSUS’s yield number shrinks to just 3 percent. Sadly, this appears typical. In 2004, HSUS ran a telemarketing campaign in Connecticut with fundraisers who promised to return a minimum of zero percent of the proceeds. The campaign raised over $1.4 million. Not only did absolutely none of that money go to HSUS, but the group paid $175,000 for the telemarketing work.
7. Research shows that HSUS’s heavily promoted U.S. “boycott†of Canadian seafood—announced in 2005 as a protest against Canada’s annual seal hunt—is a phony exercise in media manipulation. A 2006 investigation found that 78 percent of the restaurants and seafood distributors described by HSUS as “boycotters†weren’t participating at all. Nearly two-thirds of them told surveyors they were completely unaware HSUS was using their names in connection with an international boycott campaign. Canada’s federal government is on record about this deception, saying: “Some animal rights groups have been misleading the public for years … it’s no surprise at all that the richest of them would mislead the public with a phony seafood boycott.â€
Want evidence? Visit www.AnimalScam.com • www.ActivistCash.com • www.consumerfreedom.com
Revised October 2008. Complete sources and documentation available upon request.
