California's Proposition 2: Destroying CA Egg Industry?
We have had both sides of Proposition 2, that would among other animal husbandry matters, eradicate the use of cages for chickens. The prime mover behind the initiative is the Humane Society of the United States--the nation's wealthiest animal rights group (as I view it) that doesn't preach the ideology but focuses on lawsuits, initiatives, education about animal protection, etc.
In past installments, both sides have weighed in here about the impact of the price of eggs. Now the University of California Agriculture Center has a study out that predicts the destruction of the California egg industry if Proposition 2 passes. From the report:
Our analysis indicates that the expected impact would be the almost complete elimination of egg production in California within the five-year adjustment period. Non-cage production costs are simply too far above the costs of the cage systems used in other states to allow California producers to compete with imported eggs in the conventional egg market. The most likely outcome, therefore, is the elimination of almost all of the California egg industry over a very few years.Now, one could say that the UC study was agriculture industry friendly. But I think one could also say, that HSUS and other animal rightists would shed not a tear if the entire egg industry were to be destroyed.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:31 AM
8 Comments
8 Comments:
Oh, great. I really hope this doesn't pass. Egg and dairy prices (and all other groceries) have ALREADY gone up dramatically here in California because of the gas prices. I'm feeing a large family, and many of us really like eggs as a reasonably affordable and convenient protein source. Sometimes I get the feeling the animal rights crowds really just wants us all to be a bunch of under-nourished vegans...
Margaret
There is a direct relationship between treating animals humanely and higher prices. Giving decent conditions to chickens/animals requires more land, maintenance costs, higher feed costs, and so on.
So, humane treatment for animals is dependent on government regulations. So, it's a very simple trade off that we have to look at: cheap food prices and barbaric treatment or higher prices and humane treatment.
johnson - what's the goal of the animal rights' groups? is it simply humane treatment of animals or the "freedom" of animals from any control by humans? my guess is the later. if so, the "higher prices and humane treatment" just becomes a cover-up.
Dave: It is definitely the latter. Gray Francione's abolitionist movement states all animals have the right not to be owned, meaning no domestic animals of any kind, even pets. Ingrid Newkirk, "a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy," thus PETA's slogan, that animals are not ours to eat, experiment on, use for entertainment, wear as clothing, or for any other purpose.
Animal rightists will often pursue welfare issues, some of which are right and some wrong, to move the ball incrementally and raise money. But the goal is as you stated.
Wesley,
I've noticed in your reports that you consider the animal rights movement to be a single unified movement where it really isn't anything close to that. I've never seen any movements more conflicted and at each other's throats, the further you go left and the further you go right you see the very same examples.
Many people in the movement are just against the use of animals as products, so wouldn't necessarily be against fishing, or bowhunting. After all, animals do these to eachother to survive. Just one example. Many people, like me, use the utilitarian method where you weigh life based on what which loss would cause the most overall suffering.
I hope your upcoming book strongly considers the divisions within the movement and doesn' focus on the stupid phrase some of my fellow vegans use: "cruelty free".
Dave: Anyone who is okay with bow hunting doesn't believe in animal rights.
That term is often loosely used for as being synonymous with "animal protection," or animal welfare," even by people who support PETA but are not really into animal rights, properly defined.
But that is "an error. Animal rights/liberation--terms which can also be used differently--is a belief system, an ideology that says there should be no human domestication of animals. Many people would probably say that the SPCAs are animal rights gruops, when they generally are not. They are animal protection groups.
People within the movement who differ might be analogized to Catholics and Protestants fighting with each other, even though they both accept the same overarching premises but come at it from different angles.
Some animal liberationists distinguish between, 'liberation,' i.e. taking direct action to steal chickens or threaten researchers, from 'rights,' e.g. working within the legal and political systems to find a way to incrimentally end the use of animals.
But their beliefs are the same.
Moreover, if every post tried to make every nuance, they would be so long nobody would read them.
But animal rights is not animal protection. They are not synonyms. One is anti human, the other is pro animal. That is an important distinction.
The animal rights groups have multiple goals, eventually being the liberation of all animals and the end of animal agriculture. Since that goal is not entirely realistic right now, the focus instead is on making sure whatever animals have to be slaughtered do not at least live lives of extreme suffering and pain. This will in turn raise the price of meat and encourage substitution away from it, thereby further weakening consumer base of the meat industry.
Within the next 10 years, I'm hoping that the ability to grow meat on a stick will make this while issue a moot point.
Being an agricultural county should not be synonymous to cruelty to animals, but in Sonoma County it may be. How can we forget 1998 Propositions 4 and 6 and the agricultural voice against these two propositions seeking humane treatment for animals?
In 2004, Petaluma City Council passed an ordinance drafted by Petaluma Animal Shelter management and park docents banning cats from most areas of the City and prohibiting volunteers from feeding or taking care of these homeless cats. They have been trapping and killing cats by the hundreds each year ever since. Where else but in Sonoma County can this be tolerated?
Please support Proposition 2 and raise your voice against cruelty to animals.
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated." Mohandas Gandhi
www.petalumaferalcats.com
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