One day after President Barak Obama was sworn into office, the U.S. Senate confirmed his appointee, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, to be the new secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Tom Harkin (D-IA), the Senate Agriculture Committee Chair, commented, "Tom Vilsack's confirmation today signifies new leadership for the USDA, but also a new focus on the issues important to all Americans, including nutrition, conservation, energy and promoting the rural economy."

I’ve written before that Vilsack has a mixed record when it comes to protecting animals and fighting factory farming, but Senator Harkin’s words are encouraging. Let’s hope that the new agriculture secretary truly has a “new focus” and will tackle issues that are “important to all Americans.” The USDA should represent the interests of all U.S. citizens, rather than just those of the agriculture industry at the expense of animals, consumers, rural communities and the environment.

In California, spurred in part by the passage of Proposition 2 (to outlaw certain cruel confinement systems), the state senate is reforming its “agriculture committee,” which will now be called the “food and agriculture committee.” It will include legislators from non-farming areas and it plans to address concerns from stakeholders other than just agribusiness. This could create important opportunities to promote more sustainable policies and promote plant based agriculture in the country’s largest agricultural state. Californian’s should go to the committee’s website, and express their opinions.

For decades, the agriculture industry has acted cruelly and recklessly, and it has controlled legislative committees and government agencies that are supposed to oversee its activities. Industrial animal agriculture is an influential force inside of Washington, DC and state capitols, but its cruel and wasteful farming practices are repugnant, and inconsistent with most citizens’ values and interests. Once exposed, its activities can only be perceived by the wider public as indefensible, and with increasing citizen involvement, change is inevitable.

I recently visited California and attended a Gala in support of Proposition 2, which was hosted by Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi. The event featured moving performances by Carol King and Moby and raised funds to help air television commercials in California in support of Proposition 2.

Proposition 2 is the most significant effort ever undertaken in the U.S. to protect farm animals from intolerable abuse. It seeks to ban three cruel confinement systems:  veal crates, gestation crates and battery cages, and if successful, will lessen the suffering of 20 million animals. California is the largest agricultural state in the U.S., and it is the sixth largest egg producing state. Enacting Prop 2 will send ripples across the nation and help codify the fundamental principle that all animals (including those exploited in agriculture) deserve to be treated with respect.

I was deeply moved to see so much enthusiasm for Prop 2 among animal advocates in California. But factory farm corporations across the country are raising millions to try and defeat this basic humane measure. We don’t have their resources, but it’s critical that we do whatever we can to advance this crucial effort.

For decades, industrialized animal agriculture has acted with reckless self-entitlement, abusing animals and bullying those who challenge their routine cruelty.  Factory farms mistreat workers, pollute the environment, threaten rural communities and public health, and they manipulate government institutions to avoid responsibility for the harms they cause.

Agribusiness also has quasi governmental institutions, such as the American Egg Board (AEB), which work with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), to promote sales. The American Egg Board’s mission is marketing, and it is prohibited from “influencing government policy or action.” But the AEB  has allocated millions of dollars to help oppose Proposition 2, a citizens’ initiative in California that seeks to ban some of the cruelest types of factory farm confinement - veal crates, gestation crates and battery cages.  The Yes on Prop 2 campaign has sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Egg Board over the unlawful allocation of $3 million to campaign against the enactment of Prop 2 this November.

The factory farming industry routinely misleads citizens in order to maintain its advantageous position and the cruel status quo. A recent op-ed by one of their “experts” made the explicitly false claim that gestation crates are necessary to protect piglets from their mothers. Not only is it nonsensical to say mothers can’t care for their young (as demonstrated here at Farm Sanctuary where pregnant gestation sows recently rescued from Iowa floods have given birth and proven to be fantastic mothers), but there are no piglets in gestation crates in the first place. Gestation crates are where breeding sows are kept during their gestation period.

We must continue to expose abuse, to challenge unethical, dishonest, and illegal behavior, and to demonstrate that as a society we oppose cruelty and injustice. The leading edge of our fight is Prop 2 in California, and it is absolutely critical that we support this vitally important effort.

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”. 

Growing societal concerns about the aberration of factory farming was illustrated in a New York Times editorial entitled “The Worst Way of Farming” published on May 31st.   Citing recent studies, the piece stated, “…the so-called efficiency of industrial animal production is an illusion, made possible by cheap grain, cheap water and prisonlike confinement systems.”  The more people hear and learn about the significant costs (such as cheap animal feed subsidized by our tax dollars) and consequences of “cheap” meat, milk and eggs (including environmental destruction, animal abuse and human health hazards), the better.  Please read the Times’ editorial and feel free forward it on to others.

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