http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=268x2005Oh my.
groovedaddy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Thu Oct-09-08 12:36 PM
Original message
Standing, Stretching, Turning Around
The goal of the California Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act — Proposition 2 on the state’s November ballot — sounds extremely modest. It would ban the confinement of animals in a way that keeps them from being able to stand, sit, lie down, turn around and extend their limbs. The fact that such fundamental decencies have to be forced upon factory farming says a lot about its horrors. We urge California voters to pass Proposition 2. We urge every state to enact similar laws.
Americans are becoming increasingly aware of how and where food is raised. With that should come real concern. The mantra of industrial farming has always been efficiency, but efficiency has come to mean a pregnant sow — millions of them — confined in a gestation crate barely 2 feet wide and only as long as she is. It means veal-calves rendered virtually immobile in crates barely large enough to contain their bodies. It means endless rows of laying hens kept in battery cages so small that the birds cannot even stretch their wings.
No philosophy can justify this kind of cruelty, not even the philosophy of cheapness. Proposition 2 will not just improve the square footage available to these suffering animals. Reducing the concentration of animals will also help reduce the water and air pollution created by factory farms. It will also begin to redress the imbalance between small farmers and the huge corporations that have acquired vertical, and fundamentally anti-competitive, control over the meat industry.
To a California voter still undecided on Proposition 2, we say simply, imagine being confined in the voting booth for life. Would you vote for the right to be able to sit down and turn around and raise your arms?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/opinion/09thu3.html?t...
You know, when franksolich was a little lad, he used to spend part of his summers in upstate New York, on a dairy farm near Rushville. The dairy farm was not, really, a full-fledged dairy operation; it was owned and operated by a guy who had been an engineer on the Union Pacific railway in Nebraska for some decades, and after retirement, he and his wife moved back to their native upstate New York.
It was a great farm, a paradise for dairy cattle. There must have been circa 50 acres each for each cow, lots of green stuff on which to munch, everybody laid-back, relaxed, mellow.
The primitives, ever since the Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, have made a big deal, a really big deal, about high gasoline and grocery prices. Yes, yes, yes, it's sad that prices have risen, but if farmers and ranchers and producers raised stuff like these long-ago dairy cattle were treated, prices would be w-a-a-a-a-y higher.
One can't have one's cake and eat it too.
CrispyQGirl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Thu Oct-09-08 12:39 PM
Response to Original message
1. What you do to one, you do to all.
How can people turn a blind eye to the heinous way we treat factory farm animals?
I hope this prop passes.
The Krispy Kreme is obviously willing to pay more for groceries then, if this passes.
navarth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Thu Oct-09-08 12:52 PM
Response to Original message
2. **** meat. Go vegetarian.
Don't participate in this evil shit. You'll feel better, and you'll have a clearer conscience.
