Nearly 800,000 Californians signed a petition to place the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (Proposition 2) on this November’s ballot.  The measure aims to ban some of the cruelest factory farming confinement systems (veal crates for calves, gestation crates for breeding pigs and battery cages for egg laying hens.) The lives of 20 million animals in California, mostly egg laying hens, are at stake.

Feedstuffs, the Wall Street Journal of agribusiness, published an editorial titled “California Dam Must Not Be Breached” urging industry to dig in and fight Proposition 2, saying that the initiative “will affect all of livestock and poultry production across the entire U.S., if not North America.”  And, in just the last two weeks, animal industries added more than 1 million dollars to their war chest under the dubiously named campaign committee, “Californians for Safe Food.”  In his blog, HSUS President, Wayne Pacelle, suggested a couple more accurate names for the industry committee: “Industrialized Factory Farms Seeking Profits at the Expense of Animals” or the “Committee for Treating Animals Like Objects.”

Agribusiness is mounting a major campaign to defeat this basic humane measure, and money is pouring in from across the U.S. Some of our nation’s most notorious animal abusers are supporting the opposition, including: Moark LLC, a company that paid $100,000 to settle an animal cruelty case after a concerned neighbor videotaped company workers throwing live birds into a dumpster, and Gemperle, a California egg factory with a long history of animal cruelty that was uncovered by Farm Sanctuary in 2005 and 2007, and whose abuses made the news earlier this year after a Mercy for Animals investigation.

It is critical that we dig deep and combat the intolerable cruelty by supporting “Californians for Humane Farms”. 

After speaking at Borders Books in Los Gatos, California, I went out to dinner in nearby San Jose with a dozen activists involved in a major campaign.  They played a key role in collecting signatures to place an initiative on the California ballot for this coming November, which aims to ban three cruel confinement systems: veal crates, gestation crates, and battery cages.  Thanks to the hard work and dedication of these and other caring citizens, Californians voters will have a chance to lessen the suffering of nearly 20 million animals in the state on Election Day this November.  (More information on the campaign is at www.humanecalifornia.org.)

Gene