{"id":3230,"date":"2011-07-14T22:09:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T22:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farmforward1.wpengine.com\/?p=3230"},"modified":"2023-04-11T11:28:13","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T15:28:13","slug":"historic-welfare-legislation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/news\/historic-welfare-legislation\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic Welfare Legislation"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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About a decade ago a small group of animal advocates introduced a first-of-its-kind bill in the Illinois legislature to phase out the barren battery cages now used in the production of eggs\u2014cages so small that most all of today\u2019s hens cannot even stretch their wings. The bill was roundly defeated. The United Egg Producers (UEP) so strongly opposed the bill that UEP representative Gene Gregory refused to even discuss the bill with animal welfare leaders.<\/p>\n

Yet on July 7 this past week, Gregory (now the President and CEO of the UEP) and the CEO of the nation\u2019s largest animal welfare group, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), announced that UEP and HSUS will cooperate to pass federal legislation that will phase out those same barren battery cages and replace them with larger \u201cenriched cages.\u201d It\u2019s a fundamental change in the landscape of US animal protection.<\/p>\n

No federal law has ever protected farmed animals except during slaughter and farmed birds have been excluded from even this protection, so the HSUS-UEP proposal is animal welfare history in the making. It\u2019s also a history I\u2019ve watched unfold from a unique angle.<\/p>\n

When Gregory came to the Illinois legislative session a decade ago to oppose the bill introduced by Illinois Humane PAC, the Humane PAC representative he met was with Farm Forward\u2019s then-CEO, Steve Gross, my father. I remember Steve\u2019s frustration: \u201cGregory shook my hand perfunctorily and then adopted the poultry industry\u2019s longstanding, informal SOP [standard operating procedure] to refuse to dialog with animal welfare advocates.\u201d<\/p>\n

The credit for breaking this dysfunctional pattern goes in large measure to HSUS\u2019s CEO, Wayne Pacelle, who opened dialog between the American public and the poultry industry. His achievement was only possible because campaigns led by HSUS and Farm Sanctuary\u2014supported by a massive coalition of groups including Farm Forward\u2014had passed a series of state-level laws (like the one that failed in Illinois a decade ago) banning aspects of the intensive confinement of animals. A series of state-level regulations threaten to groups like the UEP more than a single, uniform national law. It was just plain common sense for the UEP to negotiate.<\/p>\n

As historic as this new dialog is, it remains only a small step forward at the level of pragmatic change: by analogy, if egg-laying hens previously were confined to a closet, under the proposed HSUS-UEP agreement they will be confined to a walk-in closet. This is a meaningful and important, but also a limited improvement. The enriched cage system<\/a>\u00a0still prevents birds from engaging in many of the basic life activities that, well, make a bird a bird: running, jumping, feeling the sun, flapping one\u2019s wings. Even more importantly, the joint HSUS-UEP proposal has not opened a conversation\u2014not yet\u2014about the\u00a0unhealthy genetics<\/a>\u00a0of the birds themselves, which I and many welfare experts, like poultry farmer\u00a0Frank Reese<\/a>, would argue is today’s biggest welfare problem in the poultry industry.<\/p>\n

The industry’s intensive breeding techniques, which changed the genetics of laying hens, led to these birds being caged in the first place. When these intensive breeding techniques managed to double the numbers of eggs hens laid each year,1<\/a> they also genetically compromised the immune systems of the birds. The industry isolated birds in cages so that they would be less likely to transmit disease. Cages, enriched or not, are an attempt to mitigate welfare problems introduced by the Frankenstein genetics of today\u2019s laying hens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scientific studies have shown that today\u2019s egg-laying hens have not only inadequate immune systems,2<\/a> but also fragile skeletons that result in a constant stream of bone breakages, and previously rare tumors3<\/a> and reproductive diseases.4<\/a> Although industry and animal advocates understand that genetics are the root cause of great suffering, few are talking about genetics because we have been, not without reason, focused on issues of how these birds are raised.<\/p>\n

As the proposed federal legislation is discussed in more detail Farm Forward will be urging both parties to listen to something Frank Reese likes to say, \u201cif you change production practices, you change production practices but if you change genetics, you change the industry.\u201d Now that producers and advocates have agreed change is needed, it is time to discuss the 800 pound gorilla in the barn: breeding \u201chigh-efficiency\u201d but unhealthy animals. In the end, it is only by addressing the genetics question that we can truly move farming forward.\u00a0\u2014Aaron Gross, Founder and Chief Executive Officer<\/p>\n

Please consider a\u00a0donation<\/a> to support our efforts to make sure the most important issue in farmed animal welfare today\u2014the problem of Frankenstein genetics\u2014is taken seriously by policy makers. Join the Farm Forward mailing list below to receive updates and important information about how you can get involved.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story behind the joint efforts of egg-industry and animal welfare professionals from the unique perspective of Farm Forward’s founder. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legislation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}