In a move to help consumers make more informed choices when choosing to eat humanely sourced animal products, the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) developed and launched the very first restaurant database. The resource identifies 150 restaurants in 15 U.S. cities that offer products and menu items created by methods that benefit animal welfare, human health, and the environment. The free database includes 11 Bay Area restaurants and others in: Atlanta, Boston, Charleston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, DC.

Sharyana Prasad who works as the Program Officer for the U.S. office of the WSPA, which is based in Boston, says the on-line tool started as a response to polls regarding the way American’s think about farm animals. “A large majority think it’s important [to be conscious and compassionate about what they eat] but don’t know how to find humane products. We want to fill the void and bring information to consumers to make it easy to switch to humane foods.”

The database took six-months to create and involved an “intensive look into 15 top cities which represent a geographical spread of metropolitan cities which may also be popular tourist destinations,” said Prasad. “Our staff and consultants looked at products on the menus and talked to the farms and ranches directly to verify. We also spoke with someone at the restaurant, either the chef or the owner, to get their perspective.”

The San Francisco restaurants included in the database are: A16, Acme Chop House, Aziza, Bar Tartine, Delfina, Magnolia Pub and Brewery and Perbacco Ristorante and Bar.

“I can’t source any other way,” says Dave McLean, owner of Magnolia Pub and Brewery. “No one wants to be responsible for being cruel or unjust. I don’t eat that way at home and when I go out I want the same. That’s just being a good person 101.”

“If you believe in putting the right things on your menu, it just requires a little research,” says Thom Fox, Acme Chophouse’s Executive Chef. “This is not only the wave of the future, it’s the wave of the now.”

In addition to the restaurant database, the Eat Humane website also features a Grocery Store Database for those who prefer to cook at home. It’s designed to help eaters find the best brands of humanely labeled foods available at the local grocery store. Some brands include Applegate Farms (available at Trader Joe’s) and Cyd’s Nest Fresh eggs (available at Safeway). The list includes products in the following categories: dairy, eggs, processed meat (includes products like burgers, hot dogs and sausage) and unprocessed meat (includes cuts of chicken, beef and pork) and is relatively comprehensive, listing choices in order of Best, Better and Good.

The website also features helpful tips and useful information to encourage people to eat less meat and supportive resources for those who choose to eat in line with their values. While some food labels indicate a meaningful animal care standard, there is no agency charged with verifying that participating farmers comply with the standards. And, in other cases though compliance is verified, the standards address only what is considered a limited definition of animal care and handling. According to the Eat Humane website “Animal welfare organizations in the U.S. have recently developed comprehensive humane standards that are verified, but products from these programs are not widely available yet.”

To make the process of finding humane food labels easier to understand, the WSPA has indicated the following as guidelines.

Their “A GOOD start” category is defined as “indicate a meaningful animal welfare standard but the standard covers only one aspect of animal care and compliance with the standard is not verified by a third party” includes foods labeled: “Cage free” (for eggs),
“Free range” (for eggs, chicken, goose, duck and turkey)
and “Grass fed” (for dairy, beef and lamb).

Their “Even BETTER” category is defined as “a higher level of animal welfare because the standards are more meaningful than those for the Good Start labels, but the standards are either not verified by a third party or cover only a limited aspect of animal care. Included here are labels such as
“Free range” (for beef, bison, pork and lamb),
“Pasture raised” (for dairy, eggs, chicken, goose, duck, turkey, beef, bison, lamb and pork) and
“USDA Organic” (for dairy, eggs, chicken, goose, duck, turkey, beef, bison, lamb and pork).

And, finally, their “The BEST options” include “Certified Humane” (for dairy, eggs, chicken, turkey, beef, lamb and pork), 
“American Humane Certified” (dairy, eggs, chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, pork) 
“Animal Welfare Approved” (dairy, eggs, chicken, turkey, duck, goose, beef, lamb, pork, rabbit) are defined as “covering multiple aspects of animal care and compliance with the standards is verified by an independent third party.”

“There are so many different labels that have some reference to humane, but people aren’t so sure which to choose,” says Prasad. “We want to encourage consumers to start with the ‘good.’ If people want to do a little more, go for the ‘best’ options.”

The WSPA has been in the U.S. for 25 years and was formed after the 1981 merger of the International Society for the Protection of Animals and the World Federation for the Protection of Animals. Based in London, the organization has offices in 18 regions around the world and works primarily in developing countries. They are the largest alliance of animal protection groups in the world with over 1,000 participating organizations in over 150 countries. Their main goal is to alleviate animal suffering and they tend to address issues that other organizations won’t touch – “like bear bating,” says Prasad. In the U.S., their primary issue is factory farming.

Of course, the WSPA is looking to add more restaurants to their database. If you are aware of any additional restaurants that serve humanely raised meat or dairy products, please send them their information at restaurants@wspausa.org.

A shorter version of this article was printed in the Winter 2010 edition of Edible San Francisco

Dave Murphy’s great review of Food, Inc. the other day was spot-on and HSUS urges everyone to see it. Its fundamental aim is to expose the rampant abuse of power that has resulted in an inefficient, polluting, degrading, cruel, and unhealthy food system in America.  To add to Dave’s commentary, I wanted to offer the perspective  of someone who works daily to address the torturous conditions that 10 billion animals raised for food routinely each year endure.

About a third of the film’s footage features feedlots, confinement facilities, and slaughterhouses. In an artful and effective way, images flick quickly from living animal to dead animal to carcass to giant vats of flesh. In so doing, the film challenges the cognitive dissonance so many people live with: identifying and empathizing with individual animals while eating others.

One scene sticks out in this regard and generated an interesting discussion at the Sacramento screening. Both the film and Michael Pollan lionize Joel Salatin, who at his Polyface Farms in Virginia, is shown raising many of his animals in what most people would consider the “old-fashioned” way – outdoors, in small herds, with species-appropriate feed. And certainly Salatin’s methods seem far preferable to how most farm animals are raised. But the film also shows a matter-of-fact Salatin and crew performing an outdoor slaughter of a number of chickens. As he chats amiably to the camera, Salatin and his co-workers grab flapping and screaming birds, cut their throats while they’re fully conscious, and then de-feather and dismember the carcasses.

As was the case the two other times when I watched this scene with an audience, I looked around to see that the vast majority of the crowd reacts viscerally: grimacing, covering eyes, wincing, looking away. As Salatin and his workers engage in these fundamentally violent acts, the audience (mostly meat-eaters) becomes uncomfortable.

It’s in this space that Food, Inc. has the biggest opportunity to impact the lives of the 10 billion animals – nearly all of whom endure far more suffering than Salatin’s chickens. If we cannot accept our role in the process that turns living, breathing animals into commodities to be slaughtered and sold, we may want to consider whether our dietary choices really reflect our values.

At the film’s close, a number of individual actions are proposed for filmgoers who will definitely be hungry for change. But only one of those encouragements has the potential to positively affect all of the ills the film highlights: reducing our consumption of animal products.

• Pollution? Giant cesspools of liquefied manure are a significant threat to air and groundwater quality. The fecal waste produced by a single industrialized pig operation (500,000 animals) exceeds that generated by the residents of Manhattan (1.5 million people).
• Food safety? Nearly 70 percent of antibiotics produced are fed to animals raised for food, contributing to the growing problem of human antibiotic resistance. Further, there is simply an irresolvable tension between raising and killing billions of animals in only a handful of plants each year and ensuring proper traceability and food safety assurances.
• Global warming? According to the UN Food & Agriculture Organization, animal agriculture is responsible for the largest contribution of any sector to global warming – more than transportation.
• Water conservation? Huge amounts of water are utilized in producing meat: According to the EPA, 400 gallons to make a single pound of chicken, for example.
• Mono-cropping? The majority of corn – 60% by some estimates – produced in this country is consumed by animals raised for food.
• Human hunger? We’re feeding animals the food that starving humans need desperately. It takes 6.5 pounds of corn for a pound of pork.
• Worker safety? Slaughterhouses are among the most dangerous workplaces. Low pay, repetitive work, the potential for injury, and the poor conditions are driven by the need to kill as many as 32,000 animals a day, as the film reports one Smithfield pig slaughter plant does.
• Rural communities? According to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, “[t]he family-owned farm producing a diverse mix of crops and food animals is largely gone as an economic entity… and rural communities have fared poorly. Industrialization has been accompanied by increasing farm size and gross farm sales, lower family income, higher poverty rates, lower retail sales, lower housing quality, and lower wages for farm workers.”

• Animal cruelty? Factory farming and the institutionalized cruelty it involves is driven by the numbers. There’s no way we can continue to eat the same number of animals without something akin to the current system – brutal, dehumanizing, and inherently cruel.

The most effective choice we can make right now is to reduce our consumption of animals. And it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. It is great to stop eating animals altogether, but every meal counts. And it’s not just The Humane Society of the United States on board with this idea: writers such as the New York Times’ Mark Bittman and Pollan advocate reduction as well, with Bittman’s new book describing his “vegan until dinner” strategy.

A new PSA for Food, Inc. featuring NBA star and vegan John Salley was unveiled at the Sacramento screening, and appears now on our web site. I spent perhaps too many words here saying what he sums up best, “Skip the meat, eat some veggies. You are the consumer, you have the power. Vote with your fork, three times a day.”

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals…. They are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

- Henry Beston, The Outermost House, 1928

It can be easy to forget that food comes from somewhere. Those of us who eat animals tend to like it that way. For that reason, for most of my life, I’ve done my hunting in the deli case, training my shopping cart on plastic-wrapped livestock at rest in a Styrofoam pasture.

On a few occasions, though, I’ve seen my dinner alive before I’ve eaten it. On a road trip after college, my friend Ian and I snuck behind a poultry warehouse in Ohio, where culled chickens had been smashed against the pavement. We ate our egg sandwiches reluctantly. Another time, a confinement hog farmer in Indiana invited us in for pork chops, while our noses still burned from the stench of manure sloshing in the pit below the animals.

I’ve had good experiences, too––fresh milk drawn under Amish lantern-light, grass-ranging lamb roasted whole at sheepdog trials, the deer we hunted one fall in Iowa. Even when I didn’t like what I saw, there was something cathartic about those moments when I knew what I was eating. Connecting the dots between muscle and meat made me feel, in a way I hadn’t before, honest.

So this spring, when a friend called with an offer to join in a buffalo slaughter, I accepted, and left the house early on an April Saturday to meet him. We drove through urban Portland and the suburbs, just to the edge of the countryside. On the hill ahead of us was a freshly hatched clutch of McMansions, but in the foreground there was pasture––and buffalo. The animals, weighing more than a thousand pounds apiece, grazed placidly, majestically, almost prehistorically. Raised on good pasture, they spend their lives free from confinement, stress or pain, until––one at a time and in comfortable environs––they are harvested.

We clamored onto fence posts in time to see the rancher single out a mature animal and shoot. I felt the ache of witnessing death, then realized I wasn’t alone in my sadness. As the rancher knelt over the buffalo and hoisted it by chains with the bucket of a loader, the rest of the herd drew in close and lowered their heads. The loader lumbered across the field, and the herd lined up in a single-file procession to usher its dead to the pasture’s edge. The sight of animals mourning––in whatever way those silent creatures did––humbled me to my carnivorous core.

So this year I’ve decided to make one resolution, and it’s one I intend to keep for life. Having seen animals like that buffalo live and die with dignity, and having seen and (as a consumer) supported the opposite, I will not eat confinement-raised meat again.

It’s a commitment that I expect will be easy to keep at home: I already do as much shopping as I can at the farmer’s market. There, I get a handshake promise from the animal’s caretaker that the creature I’m eating touched grass, felt the sun, ate a diet free of hormones and additives, and was slaughtered with dignity.

Supermarket shopping is a little harder: chicken labeled “Free Range” may never have been outside, and beef termed “Organic” may have been fed a diet heavy in corn it wasn’t meant to digest. Doing the detective work to find out where my meat, eggs, and milk are coming from will be a challenge, but a fun one. I’ve got a cell phone, and every carton in the store has a toll-free number so I can ask what kind of farm my food is coming from.

Eating out promises to be harder, especially on the road. In college towns and fancy restaurants, food is given extra value when it can be traced to a family farm and advertised as such. But in most places, pork is pork, regardless of how the pig––an animal with clean habits and intelligence on par with a dog––lived and died. I don’t want to be elitist, but I don’t think asking for fundamental respect for the animals I’m eating is pretentious––it seems merely humane. So if I’m in a restaurant that’s making an effort––advertising its “natural” meat and “cage-free” eggs, I’ll have some (and probably order seconds if they’re from an extra good source). If the menu doesn’t advertise where the meat is coming from, I’ll ask. And if quality protein isn’t on offer, I’ll have the oatmeal, and leave a little business card behind:

For good and bad, farmers, slaughterhouses, restaurants, and supermarkets make many of their decisions about animal livelihood based on what the market demands. If we, the consumer market, decide that 2009 is going to be another year of eating whatever’s cheap, abundant and easy, the outlook for the animals caught in our industrial net is sad. There is another option, but we have to decide that compassionate and carnivorous can go together.

The Humane Society has brought a wave of national attention this year to the cause of the fair treatment of farm animals, beginning with the video of a slaughterhouse in Chino, California that displayed for the world the terrible treatment that cows in our food chain are receiving.  Now, The Humane Society is sponsoring Proposition 2, which, if passed with a vote of “yes” tomorrow on California’s ballot, would require pregnant sows and veal calves enough space to turn around and stretch their legs, and would require hens the space to spread their wings.  The ballot initiative has received so much national attention, even bringing the President of The Humane Society, Wayne Pacelle, to Ellen and Oprah’s stages.  Naomi Starkman spoke with Wayne Pacelle to ask him about what will follow Proposition 2′s vote tomorrow.

Civil Eats: You’ve changed the way we view the treatment of farm animals in America. What’s next after Proposition 2?  What are some of the initiatives the Humane Society is working on?

Wayne Pacelle: We hope voters approve Prop 2, and if they do, it will add momentum to our ongoing campaign to urge people to think about their food choices, to stop particularly inhumane treatment of farm animals, and to develop humane and sustainable food policies. We look forward to working with groups and individuals with synergistic concerns, such as environmental groups and the Slow Food movement, to usher in an era with more sensible agricultural policies and practices.

The Humane Society of the United States is also focused on a wide range of other animal protection initiatives, including combating dogfighting and cockfighting, seal killing and the slaughter of other marine mammals, puppy mills and pet overpopulation, abusive hunting and trapping practices, the trade in exotic animals, and much more. We also respond to human-caused and natural disasters for animals and maintain the nation’s largest network of animal care facilities.

CE: Is Yes on Prop 2 a sure thing?  What’s standing in the way of it being a slam dunk?

WP: It is not a slam dunk, but we are making good progress in educating the public about the threats that factory farming poses to animals, the environment, food safety, and small farms. Large factory farming agribusiness companies from throughout the nation are pouring money into the No on 2 campaign and trying to confuse voters. They’ve donated about $9 million and invested that money on television advertisements to tell us that white is black and black is white. They make the ludicrous argument that it’s better for the animals to be confined in tiny cages for their entire lives and also that it promotes food safety to trap them in cages and cluster tens of thousands of animals in windowless buildings. We think the public will see through their charade, but in politics, you cannot take anything for granted. That’s why we have the most powerful grassroots campaign for Prop 2 that California has seen in a long time.

CE: If Prop 2 passes, will the Humane Society or other groups reach out to help factory farms change their infrastructure? To train them to use new techniques?

WP: We are certainly willing to help, but factory farms have plenty of resources to consult in shifting to more humane farming practices. More and more farmers are paying closer attention to animal welfare and environmental concerns. In fact, many egg factory farms are already producing cage-free eggs because of the growing demand for these more humanely produced animal products.

Some industrial farmers may need to learn about animal husbandry anew because they’ve been operating animal factories and actually know very little about caring for the animals.

CE: The undercover video in Chino brought a lot of attention to the treatment of animals and issues of transparency at slaughterhouses. How do you see the “animal protection” movement changing?

WP: The abuses of downer cows at Chino — a slaughter plant that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the industry held up as a model facility — was a wake-up call to Americans that we cannot trust the meat industry to self-regulate. We need standards and we need enforcement of these standards, for the health of the animals and the safety of our food. I see The HSUS and other animal protection groups devoting more attention to the treatment of farm animals, and that new focus and attention is desperately needed.

Photo: Beth and Ron

Yesterday, Oprah spent her entire show discussing the treatment of the animals we raise for meat in this country. No wilting flower, Oprah did not shy away from discussing a subject that got her into a lot of hot water in the late 1990s, when she was sued by cattle ranchers for food disparagement when she admitted during the period of fear surrounding the early outbreaks of mad cow disease that she was “stopped cold from eating another burger.”

Back then, she didn’t have the eloquent ammo provided in Michael Pollan’s New York Times Magazine letter to the next commander-in-chief on Sunday, which focused on the perils of letting growth be the single factor in running the food system: “When a single factory is grinding 20 million hamburger patties in a week or washing 25 million servings of salad, a single terrorist armed with a canister of toxins can, at a stroke, poison millions. Such a system is equally susceptible to accidental contamination: the bigger and more global the trade in food, the more vulnerable the system is to catastrophe. The best way to protect our food system against such threats is obvious: decentralize it.”

On Oprah’s program, the issue at hand was the upcoming vote in California on Proposition 2, a referendum on changing the way laying hens, pregnant sows and veal calves are kept in confinement. A reformed eater of the standard American diet, Oprah has discussed issues of health on her program before, such as earlier this year when she ate a vegan diet for three weeks to lose weight. At the beginning of the program, she stood before her audience and presented visual representations of the current standards in confinement: six hens to a cage not large enough for any one to open its wings, a six foot long sow in a seven foot block with no room to turn around, and a calf in a similarly small paddock. The debate was on. We would be presented with both sides of the argument, and Oprah would refrain from bias, even though she stated that we are “the measure of how we treat the weaker among us,” twice.

Lisa Ling was on hand to talk about the videos at both caged and cage-free chicken operations, and confined and free-range pig farms. At both, we witnessed smaller “caged” operations, run by families who insisted that Proposition 2 was the kind of legislation that could put them out of business. They argued that they just didn’t have the space or money to retrofit their barns to fulfill this obligation. A representative speaking against Proposition 2 stated that the results of this bill passing would be less available food. Should Proposition 2 pass in November, these fears of mid-sized operations need to be eased. At the free-range farm, space was plentiful, and the animals seemed to fulfill the romantic vision farming holds in our consumer minds. The most interesting moment, arrested by a commercial break before it could come to fruition, was when the free-range pig farmer reached out to the confinement operator and said that he used to think that putting the pigs free to roam outside would be too hard, that they would be cold in the winter or would be difficult to breed and maintain. But that now he has come to realize that it just isn’t so. I really hoped Oprah would let him go on, but the schedule of daytime television was set in stone.

Back from the break we were on to veal calves. Apparently no confinement operator would let Oprah’s cameras on the premises, because they used fuzzy footage taken in the most horrible conditions imaginable by an activist: calves that could not stand up, that had never even learned to walk, and were chained by the neck to their paddock. It was reminiscent of the videos released last year of the California slaughterhouse that set in motion a change it the public thinking about the treatment of the animals we eat. As a contrast, Oprah’s camera crew visited a free-range cattle farm in Wisconsin, where calves were raised on their mother’s milk with the other cows, distinguished only by a tag on their ear that they would be sold as veal calves. For a contrasting view, a representative from the veal processor’s union argued that Proposition 2 was unnecessary, because producers were already moving in that direction. To that I ask, then why oppose it?

The fact that the argument has reached Oprah’s stage is telling for where we will continue to see this discussion going forward. As she reaches on average 14 million viewers per program, we can assume many new people have been brought into the fold, and have been given images of where our food comes from to turn over in their mind. What Proposition 2 might lack in assistance for small factory farmers to make the transition could be gained in the seven years before the implementation of the law. While not perfect, Proposition 2 calls for the humane treatment of the food we eat, something that was practiced up until we laid the foundation for industrial agriculture. We have been detached from these truths about where our food comes from for too long, and whether Proposition 2 passes or not, the argument for changing the way we farm, and specifically, raise the animals we eat in this country has gone mainstream.

Photo: gthebash

The recent debate over Proposition 2, eloquently outlined in Paul Shapiro’s post, is a timely example of the dilemma we now face: We want food we can feel good about, even after we know all the facts; but the vast majority of our meat, dairy and eggs still come from factory farms. So how did we get here, and how do we change course?

One of the guiding principles of the Slow Food movement is a belief that food should be produced “in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare, or our health.” As the director of the Animal Welfare Approved program, an organization that promotes the well-being of farm animals and the sustainability of humane family farms, I couldn’t agree more. We feel closely aligned to the Slow Food mission, as we too believe that it is important to be connected to your food and to those who produce it. The way food is produced is as important—if not more so—as simply being able to identify the source. There is a growing awareness of the impact that animal agriculture has on our environment, and the role we all play in choosing how to stock our refrigerators.

It should come as no surprise that farmers who are invested in the welfare of their animals produce high quality food. When animals are given the freedom to express their natural behaviors, fed a diet consistent with their physiology, and provided a low-stress environment, there are benefits for all involved: the animals, the environment, and consumers.

As a former organic poultry farmer in England, I watched my fellow farmers leave the countryside as farming was no longer a viable option. I came to America with a vision of reconnecting people to the source of their food. I believe this organization is doing just that. Our goals are ambitious, but achievable: to improve farm animal welfare, support family farmers, care for the environment, and unite conscientious consumers with farmers who practice high-welfare husbandry. As an extension of this mission, we offer free third-party accreditation to farmers who adhere to our husbandry standards. We were recently endorsed by the World Society for the Protection of Animals as having the highest animal welfare standards of any third-party certifier.

This is both our greatest asset and our greatest challenge. As we have raised the bar with respect to welfare standards, we must also take a role in helping farmers meet them. We function equally as third party certifier, marketing assistant, and extension agent in order to support and promote the independent family farmers we work with. We also recently announced our Good Husbandry Grants program, through which farmers may apply for grants of up to $10,000 to improve farm animal welfare. Much of the research on high-welfare husbandry has been done, but often farmers don’t have the resources for practical implementation. Through these grants, we will show how high-welfare husbandry can work to create sustainable food systems.

We will be involved in many different events throughout Slow Food Nation, and sincerely hope that you will join us. We will be partnering with Woodward’s Garden for a Slow Dinner on Sunday, and will be appearing in various Soapbox presentations on Saturday. I will be joining Patricia Whisnant, President of the American Grassfed Association, along with rancher Will Harris and others on a Grass-Fed Beef panel during Changemakers Day. Animal Welfare Approved farmer, Eliza MacLean of Cane Creek Farm, will be presenting with Chef Joe Bonaparte on heritage pigs raised on pasture, and Brian Anselmo of Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch will be speaking in a Changemaker’s Day presentation on the value and marketability of pastured heritage turkeys. If you are unable to attend Slow Food Nation, take a look at our website to learn more about the program and the outstanding farmers who are a part of it. If you are making the journey, we look forward to seeing you in San Francisco.

The plight of the animals we raise for food in this country rarely enters the forefront of our societal consciousness, but Californians are about to learn a whole lot more about what these animals go through when election season kicks off this fall.

That’s because they’ll cast their ballots this November on Prop 2—the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act—a measure endorsed by Slow Food Nation, the Humane Society of the United States, the Center for Food Safety, and authors such as Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser.

This moderate measure merely seeks to provide certain farm animals with enough room to stand up, lie down, turn around, and extend their limbs. It really is that basic.

Unfortunately, the majority of egg-laying hens, calves raised for veal, and breeding pigs in the United States are confined in tiny cages and crates where they can barely move an inch their whole lives. In effect, Prop 2 will phase out the extreme confinement of these animals.

These three inhumane systems epitomize the abuse that can occur when we take industrialization of our food system to the extreme—abuse that the Slow Food movement has rightly objected to for years.

Perhaps the least well-known of the three systems is the so-called “battery cage” for egg-laying hens. In Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan writes:

“Egg and hog operations are the worst….Broiler chickens…at least don’t spend their eight-week lives in cages too small to ever stretch a wing. That fate is reserved for the American laying hen, who passes her brief span piled together with a half-dozen other hens in a wire cage whose floor a single page of this magazine could carpet. Every natural instinct of this animal is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral ‘vices’ that can include cannibalizing her cagemates and rubbing her body against the wire mesh until it is featherless and bleeding. Pain? Suffering? Madness? The operative suspension of disbelief depends on more neutral descriptors, like ‘vices’ and ‘stress.’ Whatever you want to call what’s going on in those cages, the 10 percent or so of hens that can’t bear it and simply die is built into the cost of production.”

This routine cruelty we force upon egg-laying hens and other factory-farmed animals is perhaps the most egregious example of the abrogation of our responsibility to treat animals with a sense of basic decency.

In endorsing Prop 2, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof asks, “The law punishes teenage boys who tie up and abuse a stray cat. So why allow industrialists to run factory farms that keep pigs almost all their lives in tiny pens that are barely bigger than they are?”

Kristof isn’t alone in wondering about this schism we face in terms of our love of dogs and cats and near-total disregard for even the most basic interests of farm animals who are capable of suffering every bit as much as the animals we welcome into families. The fact that we would never force our dogs and cats to live in filthy, cramped cages for their whole lives begs the question of whether we should force farm animals to endure such misery, either.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that nearly 600 California veterinarians, along with the California Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA), are endorsing the “Yes” vote on Prop 2. Dr. Jeff Smith, former president of the CVMA writes in the Modesto Bee, “As a veterinarian, I support Proposition 2 because I can think of no other animals confined to this degree that are deemed humanely housed.”

As to be expected, Prop 2 does indeed have some opponents. On the other side of this initiative is a cast of characters from the factory farming industry with a particularly sordid history of cruelty to animals and consumer fraud. Major financial contributors to the opposition have been caught abusing animals in undercover exposés, paid big bucks to settle criminal animal cruelty charges, and even paid $100,000 to settle allegations of 17 attorneys general—including California’s—that they were misleading the public about animal welfare.

These well-financed opponents are already planning on spending millions of dollars to confuse voters and deceive them about Prop 2. And one thing is for certain: The agribusiness industry doesn’t like to lose, especially in the nation’s top agricultural state. It intends to fight hard, meaning Californians will be hearing quite a lot about the treatment of farm animals in the next three months. Voters will have to sort fact from fiction.

Each one of us can help win a victory for animal welfare, the environment, food safety, and public health by getting involved and supporting the Yes on Prop 2 campaign. The opportunity for so many social movements to join together and fight for a common cause is exciting, and one that will likely yield positive results not only in this election, but for years to come.

Make sure to check out YESonProp2.com – and remember to vote where your mouth is by voting YES! on 2 this November.

Photos by Laurel Fan, Katie@! and Pikaluk