Making Hay

Teach Your Children Well

By Gene

Like most people in the United States, I grew up eating meat, milk and eggs, and believing that it was healthy to do so. I didn’t make a conscious choice to eat animal foods – I just adopted the habit from my parents and from everyone else around me without thinking very much about it. Had I been exposed to the benefits of plant-based eating earlier, I certainly would have consumed far fewer animal products.

I don’t begrudge my parents for raising and feeding me the way they did. They believed these foods were good for my siblings and me. They believed, as many parents still do, that meat, milk, and eggs are a necessary part of the human diet. In her excellent book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, Melanie Joy describes a social construction she calls “carnism,” whereby the consumption of animal flesh and the violence of animal exploitation and slaughter are normalized and institutionalized. These habits and beliefs begin to take hold when we are children.

Thankfully, there are resources and a number of youth programs now available to teach children critical thinking skills and the benefits of eating plants instead of animals. I recently had the opportunity to visit Terra Summer, a camp for kids between the ages of 11 and 14 where food is used to teach math, history, geography, and other topics. The vegetarian camp introduces young people to the benefits of plant-based eating and also teaches cooking and food preparation skills. The day I visited, the students created five different kinds of veggie burgers. All were delicious!

It was wonderful to see this generation learning about the importance of conscientious eating and the profound impact of our food choices. Our individual and collective wellbeing, as well as the future of other animals and our planet, are directly influenced by what we eat and how it is produced.

Industry Comes to the Table

By Gene

Earlier this month, in an historic compromise between the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) and the United Egg Producers (UEP), citizens’ initiatives in the states of Washington and Oregon were put on hold in exchange for a commitment from UEP to work jointly with HSUS in support of a federal law to prohibit the cruel confinement of egg laying hens in barren battery cages. Although the UEP has defended battery cages for years, asserting that they promote animal welfare and food safety, the trade organization has come to recognize that the use of these cages is outside the bounds of acceptable conduct in our society.

The vast majority of citizens believe that farm animals deserve to be treated with respect, and they oppose commonly employed factory farming practices. With the UEP agreement, the egg industry has joined the pork industry and the veal industry, which have announced plans to phase out gestation crates and veal crates, respectively. Farm Sanctuary and our colleagues have exposed and challenged these inhumane confinement systems for decades, and we’re finally seeing progress, especially over the past ten years.

The UEP agreement is particularly important in that it calls for federal legislation. This will be the first nationwide law to address the welfare of animals on farms, and it could lead to other federal legislation addressing farmed animal welfare in the future, a possibility that has other industry groups concerned.

The UEP/HSUS agreement goes beyond just cage size and conformation. It will also require that eggs be labeled according to how the hens who laid them are housed, which will remind consumers that their eggs come from real, living animals and will help increase awareness about the consequences of their food choices. Everybody, except proponents of the factory farming industry, benefits when citizens make more informed and conscientious food choices, opting for foods that are more healthful, humane and environmentally sustainable.

Change occurs through the adoption of new laws and policies, like the HSUS/UEP agreement, and through consumer choices, which collectively define market trends. On both fronts, we are beginning to see positive signs. Still, there is an awful long way to go, and it is absolutely crucial that we keep pushing for improvements. Stay tuned to help enact the HSUS/UEP measure in Washington, DC, in the near future. In the meantime, you can vote with your dollars every day by choosing to eat plant foods instead of animal foods.

Groundbreaking Opportunity for Hens

By guest blogger Bruce Friedrich, senior director for strategic initiatives at Farm Sanctuary

On July 7, while most of the United States baked in the summer heat, it was a great day for snowballs in Hell. The United Egg Producers, the trade group of the most abusive of farmed animal industries, agreed to support federal legislation that will, upon enactment, improve the welfare of all laying hens in the nation.

Until now, the UEP supported industry practices that make existence a living hell for chickens. It was a proponent of battery cages, wire confinement structures so small that, for the five to ten hens crammed in each, the expression of natural behavior is reduced to little more than breathing and defecating. In these torture chambers, hens are unable to spread even one wing.

Even worse, roughly 50 million hens are crammed into these cages with only 48 square inches per bird. They are literally living on top of one another. Additionally, tens of millions are starved for 2-week periods to shock their bodies into an extra laying cycle.

Practices previously supported by the UEP are so loathsome that a state ballot initiative to ban them passed in California with the most "yes" votes in the state’s ballot initiative history. Similar initiatives were poised for passage in Washington State and Oregon over the next couple years, until the UEP relented.

Extraordinary work by Farm Sanctuary and Humane Society of the United States activists in California, Ohio, Washington, and Oregon has brought the UEP to the table: Even the egg producers can see the writing on the wall, which foretells the end of battery cages. They have agreed to aggressively support legislation that will lessen suffering for hundreds of millions of animals every single year.

The legislation supported by the UEP will: 1) require the eventual nationwide elimination of battery cages; 2) require environmental enrichment that will allow all laying hens to engage in important natural behaviors; 3) mandate labeling on all egg cartons nationwide to inform consumers of the method used to produce the eggs; 4) prohibit forced molting through starvation; 5) prohibit excessive ammonia levels in henhouses -- a problem common in the industry and harmful to both hens and workers; 6) require standards for euthanasia practices; and 7) prohibit the sale of all eggs and egg products nationwide that don't meet these requirements.

This bill, if enacted, will be the first federal law relating to the treatment of chickens used for food, the first federal law relating to the treatment of animals while on farms, and the first federal law improving the treatment of farmed animals in more than 30 years. You can rest assured that Farm Sanctuary will vigorously push for the passage of this legislation.

Some of the requirements, including the total phase out of battery cages, will take years. But some of the provisions, such as those relating to molting, ammonia, and euthanasia,will be implemented almost immediately after enactment, substantially reducing the suffering of hens. Furthermore, while our efforts so far have helped tens of millions of birds annually, this legislation will help 250 million every year within a few years and will eventually remove all U.S. hens from battery cages forever.

At Farm Sanctuary, we share our lives with hens, and we know them as individuals. We will continue to teach consumers that all egg consumption supports cruelty. The idea of confining hens in any cages, including the enriched colony cages (12-foot by 4-foot cages with perches, dust bathing areas, and other forms of enrichment) that will replace tiny battery cages, is unacceptable to us.

Nonetheless, this deal represents a victory for farmed animals. We are proud of our significant part in making it happen, and we salute the hard work of animal protection advocates nationwide who worked so hard on behalf of our nation's hens.