UEP, which represents 87 percent of domestic egg production, and HSUS are jointly petitioning Congress to create national animal welfare standards for egg production, notably transitioning from battery cages to enriched housing systems, including perches, nesting boxes, and scratching areas that provide laying hens almost double the amount of space than current systems.

The groups want to amend the Egg Products Inspection Act to mandate standards they agreed to in a landmark agreement in July. Eggs produced under conditions that don’t meet the new standards would not be allowed for sale in the U.S. under the new proposal, which would fully phase out battery cages by 2029.

Egg producers say they’re seeking the national standards in the face of a growing patchwork of varying state laws and regulations. Livestock groups are not pleased about the idea, which they fear will create a precedent for more federal regulations on livestock care.

In a letter to the House Agriculture Committee sent last week, eight leading livestock groups blasted the proposal, saying that it would impose “costly and unnecessary animal rights mandates,” according to a Feedstuffs report.

Livestock interest groups said that the uniform standards would ensure that “Congress will be in the egg business for years to come” and even called the proposal “an unconscionable federal overreach.” The groups argue the new standards’ $10 billion price tag would eliminate jobs and reduce consumer choice.

The letter was signed by the Egg Farmers of America, which represents a small fraction of the egg industry, the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Farmers Union, American Sheep Industry Association, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Milk Producers Federation, National Pork Producers Council and National Turkey Federation, according to Feedstuffs.

United Egg Producers fired back Thursday with their own letters to both agriculture committees on Capitol Hill.

“Although we respect the right of the livestock groups to make their views known, the letter provides an overheated and distorted view of an initiative that is strongly supported by U.S. egg farmers,” said the letter.

In their rebuttal, UEP called the fear of setting a precedent for burdensome regulation as “hypothetical and baseless.”

“We hope Congress will realize that we are seeking legislation only for the egg industry,” continues the letter. “Both we and HSUS will oppose efforts to bring any other livestock or poultry species into the legislation.”

When the deal was announced in July, egg industry representatives said they would be closely monitoring and studying the humane standards’ impact on food safety.

“We have to make sure that we’re not giving up anything on the food safety front,” said a leading executive, who added that the industry would still be following the new U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

Originally published on Food Safety News

The goal of The HSUS is not endless campaigning or conflict with political adversaries, but to find a place where we can forge solutions that produce tangible and meaningful outcomes for animals and show a new way forward in society. And that means sitting down with people who see the world differently than we do, even sitting down with industries that we’ve had deep disagreements with in the past.

Yesterday, we put that principle into practice. I participated in a press conference that I thought could only occur many years into the future: a joint event with The HSUS and the United Egg Producers (UEP).

The UEP is the primary trade association for the egg industry, and we’ve been at war with them over the extreme confinement practices in the industry—specifically, the confinement of laying hens in barren battery cages. We’ve supported bills in legislatures, ballot measures in the states, and litigation in the courts to make our case and to demand better living conditions for laying hens. With more than 260 million hens caught up in extreme confinement systems, we knew there was a lot at stake.

Yesterday, with the leaders of UEP at my side, I announced an agreement between the two organizations to mark the beginning of the end of the era of barren battery cages in America. The agreement, by calling for a national labeling program for all eggs sold in commerce, also promises to provide consumers with more information on the production practices used by egg farmers. This historic agreement calls for a series of reforms to be put into place in the years ahead that will demonstrably improve the lives of laying hens.

There’s currently no federal protection for chickens used for food at all, and no protection for any farm animals during production (there’s a federal humane slaughter law only, and even it applies only to mammals and not to birds). With this agreement, I have great hope that may soon change.

In short, the proposed legislation that HSUS and the UEP will work to enact would:

• require a moratorium at the end of 2011 on new construction of unenrichable battery cages—small, cramped, cages that nearly immobilize more than 90 percent of laying hens today—and the nationwide elimination of barren battery cages through a phase-out period;
• require phased-in construction of new hen housing systems that provide each hen nearly double the amount of space they’re currently provided;
• require environmental enrichments so birds can engage in important natural behaviors currently denied to them in barren cages, such as perches, nesting boxes, and scratching areas;
• mandate labeling on all egg cartons nationwide to inform consumers of the method used to produce the eggs, such as “eggs from caged hens” or “eggs from cage-free hens”;
• prohibit forced molting through starvation—an inhumane practice that is inflicted on tens of millions of hens each year and which involves withholding all food from birds for up to two weeks in order to manipulate the laying cycle;
• prohibit excessive ammonia levels in henhouses—a common problem in the industry that is harmful to both hens and egg industry workers; and
• prohibit the sale of all eggs and egg products nationwide that don’t meet these requirements.

Some of the provisions will be implemented nearly immediately after enactment, such as those relating to molting, ammonia, and euthanasia, and others after just a few years, including labeling and the requirement that all birds will have to have at least 67 square inches of space each. (Currently, approximately 50 million laying hens are confined at only 48 square inches each.)

One thesis in my new book, The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them is that so much animal mistreatment happens because so many of us in society have become disconnected from animals. In other words, they are far removed from our daily experiences, especially those animals used in institutional settings for a wide variety of purposes.

We are disconnected from the fur trade or the skin trade—we can select these products from the rack or even from a mail order catalog, and they later show up on a doorstep or at the apartment. We are greatly distant from the animal testing that goes on in the run-up to marketing of household products and cosmetics, which are nicely lined up and available to us at department stores bearing no evidence of any pain, suffering, or struggle on the part of an animal. We are certainly very removed from our meat, which comes neatly wrapped and packaged in its proper section at the supermarket, well-prepared at a restaurant, or barely recognizable at a fast food joint.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg faced up to this reality in announcing recently that he’d no longer eat meat unless he’d killed the animals himself. This of course means, according to him, that he’s reduced his meat consumption substantially. He then proceeded to slaughter some animals with a knife held in his own two hands. He’s presumably eaten these animals.

Many Americans expressed shock at the act and sympathized with the animals he killed. Some condemned Zuckerberg, accusing him of being cruel.
While I understand those natural reactions to the killing of these creatures, I think we owe Zuckerberg some plaudits, not only for reminding people that eating meat involves the killing of animals, but also for recognizing that it’s morally dubious to simply pass the “dirty work” off to an anonymous slaughter plant worker. Indeed, we should ask ourselves if there’s really much of an ethical difference between killing an animal (what Zuckerberg is doing) and paying others to kill animals for us (what most of us do).

Too many of us avert our eyes and prefer not to think much about how food gets to our table. It can make it easier for us to rationalize the mistreatment of animals in factory farms and slaughter plants if we believe ourselves far removed from the process—without feeling any connection or sense of obligation to the animals, or even seeing them at all.

Yet if every American were to adopt Zuckerberg’s approach—or even just witness, if not participate in, what happens to farm animals—you can bet there’d be many fewer animals suffering on factory farms.

Zuckerberg’s act, in its own way, was an act of conscience for him.  It was also a public provocation. Eating is a moral act, and it’s time we all face up to it, wherever we may ultimately land on this important question.

Photo: Cary Smith

Originally published on Wayne Pacelle’s blog

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.”

The ringleader of these attacks is an industry PR front group deceitfully named the “Center for Consumer Freedom,” led by DC lobbyist Rick Berman. Started with a $600,000 grant from Phillip Morris, CCF is also funded by alcohol, restaurant, and agribusiness interests. It campaigns against groups as varied as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Cancer Institute. The editorial boards of USA Today and the Washington Post have condemned CCF for misleading the public. ABC News has also exposed the organization as a front group.

When it comes to campaigning, CCF isn’t exactly known for its fidelity to the truth. So it should come as no surprise that CCF spokesperson David Martosko recently made their strategy of smearing the messenger quite explicit. As he explained it to agribusiness cheerleader Trent Loos, rather than discussing the issues at hand, just destroy the reputation of your critics. Martosko concluded to Loos: “You can either lose pretty or win ugly.”

(Note: Trent Loos criticizes HSUS so religiously that even when HSUS helped expose the notorious Michael Vick dogfighting ring, Loos wrote that Vick—who admitted to drowning, hanging, and electrocuting dogs—generated outcry because he “has not been treating his dog like a kid.”)

This scorched earth strategy is of course the tactic of an industry that must not believe it can win in the marketplace of ideas. And indeed, that’s the predicament of those who defend confining farm animals in cages so small they can’t even turn around or extend their limbs.

Poll after poll—whether conducted by animal welfare groups, independent firms, or agribusiness groups—find that Americans oppose battery cages for laying hens, along with gestation and veal crates for pigs and calves. And the science confirms what common sense already knew: these extreme confinement systems are inherently detrimental to the animals’ welfare.

With more states continuing to pass modest reforms aimed at easing the suffering of farm animals—Maine just banned gestation crates and veal crates—you can rest assured that Big Ag and its paid attack dogs like CCF will only increase both the frequency and vitriol of their smears. While you may not be able to believe much of what they say, I think we can take them at their word that such attacks will be quite ugly. For the sake of animals, consumers, and the planet, let’s make sure they’re not successful.