One of my biggest issues is finally getting enough support to get on the California ballot. The way that animals are treated in factory farms is repugnant to me. I’m not against people eating meat, in fact my roommates (cats), are quite the carnivores. I am just against the inhumane and tortuous treatment of animals in these factory farms.
The "Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act" needs 650,000 signatures by February in order to get on the ballot in 2008. These signatures have to be collected by hand by a registered voter. I will get some petitions and collect signatures but I am particularly asking you to also collect signatures. Even 3 will really help. So if you feel the same way I do about factory farms please help out by collecting signatures.
Here is the information. If you are empathetic with beings in pain don’t open up the photo section on these web sites, but the volunteer page is ok.
This measure will put pressure on factory farms, which are among the most serious causes of resource depletion, pollution, and global warming. It will improve the lives of millions of animals in California by banning some of the most inhumane forms of confinement on factory farms: battery cages, gestation crates, and veal crates. (For more information please see www.HumaneCalifornia.org.)
If you would like to receive a petition to sign and then circulate among your family and friends so that their signatures will count too, please sign up as a volunteer at www.humanecalifornia.org!
2 comments:
I think it is both helpful and necessary to examine this issue as part of the larger issue of the oligopoly-type concentration and government subsidation of agribusiness overall. Whether farming animals or plants, the problem of scale greatly increases the likelihood that such abuses and harmful practices will occur.
For crops, petro-chemical pesticides, GMO seed, and single-crop plots provide just as much a threat as the cruel treatment of animals, antibiotics, feeding animals other animals and non-food feed like concrete dust and newspaper.
Continued government subsides like in the recent 2007 Farm Bill that rewards farms by the quantity produced are also a big part of what needs to be targeted because it provides the incentive for the practices you oppose.
Not only do the financial incentives to increase output harm animals by taking these shortcuts but they harm the employees who are held to unmanageable quotas and one of the highest rates of injury on the job of any occupations.
These subsidies also have secondary effects on the people of other countries because they artificially cheapen the prices of these goods on the world market, putting other countries' farmers out of work and plunging them into poverty.
Then there is the environmental degredation and public health costs that the companies externalize and force the public to pay for and clean up. These present also, great future dangers when GMO cross-contamination cannot be controlled or prevented and when diseases pass from animals to humans.
I think if all of these movements can unite and push for comprehensive reform and support one another's individual legislative efforts there will be a MUCH greater chance of success.
Best to you.
In solidarity,
Chi Saeng
For me, the 'sin' in this is our disconnection from the suffering we are causing. (And it's hard to imagine how eating anything that has suffered so much, needlessly, can be good for us.) I believe that if most people could see, first hand, the conditions of these farm animals, rather than just seeing nice clean little plastic packages of meat in supermarkets, they would not be able to stomach the food. Thanks for posting this, Seisen.
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