Hooray for Hollywood - Well Actually California

California, which is way ahead of other states on social and environmental movements, will have a referendum this November on animal rights in California. Proposition 2 would ban factory farms from raising chickens, calves or hogs in small pens or cages. Finally! While I do not think people should give up eating meat (they never will), the way animals are raised and slaughtered for consumption is atrocious and extremely inhumane. Witness the recent investigations by the Humane Society of the United States and others that have documented that "downed" cattle, those too sick or disabled to stand or walk, are routinely beaten, dragged with chains, shocked with electric prods, and pushed by forklifts in efforts to move them at slaughter facilities. California is taking a step to make the “food from the farm to the table” process more humane.

In his column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof says this is a major gain for the animal rights movement and is part of a broader trend, which is about time and I more than welcome. While he does eat meat, as do I (but not the pig and I try to buy only free range chicken and beef), like me, he draws the line at animals being raised in cruel conditions. He goes on to say “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?...penning pigs or veal calves so tightly that they cannot turn around seems to cross that line.” He has expressed my sentiments exactly in his Op-Ed column which you can read at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/opinion/31kristof.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin.