Botched Ballot Measure Keeps Hens in Cages
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Bradley Miller, Humane Farming Association (HFA)
February 2015

That is exactly the kind of cruelty and intensive confinement that California voters were promised Proposition 2 would outlaw!

 

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb. 18, 2015 — The president of the Humane Farming Association (HFA) has published an eye-opening report in the Sacramento Bee which exposes California's failed law regarding egg industry cages.

More than six years ago, voters passed a ballot measure known as Proposition 2. Its sponsor, the long since discredited Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), falsely promised supporters that its measure would ban all egg industry cages statewide by January 1, 2015.

In reality, the measure has allowed the egg industry to invest in new cages as well as simply modifying old ones. This obscene reversal of voter intent was made possible by the determined negligence of HSUS.

“Cage-Free” Replaced by Free to Cage

“HSUS was repeatedly told that the unending use of cages would be the result of Proposition 2 unless its fatally flawed language was corrected. At the very least, it needed to specify exactly how much space would be required per hen,” notes HFA president Bradley Miller.

“The drafting errors in Proposition 2 were painfully obvious from the very beginning. But HSUS ignored all the warnings and deliberately marched ahead with a vague and utterly unenforceable measure.”

Now, six years later, the chickens have come home to roost. And not surprisingly, they're being put in cages.

Some press reports have blurred the distinction between Proposition 2 — which is not being enforced in any way — and completely separate regulations put in place by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The department allows for hens to be confined to cages with only 116 square inches allotted per bird, roughly the size of a sheet of legal paper.

That is exactly the kind of cruelty and intensive confinement voters were promised Proposition 2 would outlaw!

Please click here for the full report from the Sacramento Bee.

And please share this report with others. Thank you, and stay tuned as events unfold and corrective action is taken.

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