Farm animal rights law would require room to roam

EVELYN NIEVES - Associated Press


Two decades later, the treatment of farm animals is a national issue being debated in state Legislatures and put before voters who want to have a say in how their food is raised. Footage circulated on the Internet of sick farm animals being kicked and beaten has intensified calls for reform.

"People want conditions to change," said Sturla, who co-founded the Animal Place sanctuary for abused and discarded farm animals, in 1989. "On this issue, you don't have to give propaganda. In fact, you have to downplay the conditions or people will shut down. They'll think you're embellishing."

This fall, California voters will consider the most comprehensive farm animal rights law in the country, a measure that would ban cramped metal cages for egg-laying hens, metal gestation crates for pregnant sows and veal crates for lambs - standard industry practices in which the animals are kept so confined that they can barely move.


Earlier this year, the Colorado legislature became the first in the nation to prohibit the use of gestation crates for pregnant pigs and veal crates for calves. In the last three years, Florida and Oregon voters have banned gestation crates and Arizona voters banned both gestation crates and veal crates.

A showdown between proponents and opponents of the California measure, initiated by the Humane Society of the United States, looms. While California's pork and veal farming is small, the egg industry, the fifth largest in the country, is preparing an all-out campaign to defeat the measure.


"This ballot measure, sponsored by a Washington, D.C.-based special interest group, will have dangerous and expensive consequences for California," said Julie Buckner, a spokeswoman for Californians for SAFE Food, a group created by the egg industry to oppose the initiative.




