The View from New York, By Ned Groth

Farm Animal Welfare: Are American Ethical Sensibilities Maturing?

I have long regarded concern for animal welfare as a marker of human ethical evolution, and for many years I perceived that Europeans were more advanced than Americans on those issues. But there are signs that America is catching up. In recent years, several US states have adopted laws requiring more humane treatment of food animals. And while it may have gone largely unnoticed because of intense interest in our historic presidential election, the most important such animal-welfare proposal ever considered here was approved by California voters on November 4.

Such laws have been enacted here before. In 2002, Florida voters banned confining pregnant sows in “gestation crates.” In 2006, Arizona voters outlawed gestation crates for sows and veal crates for calves. And in 2004, California banned force-feeding ducks to produce foie gras. But this year’s California’s ballot measure is the most comprehensive to date.

Proposition 2, as the California measure was called, is simple in concept. It requires that animals raised for food must be given enough space to stand up, lie down, turn around, and fully extend their limbs. It specifically bans the use of veal crates, sow breeding crates, and housing egg-laying hens in “battery cages,” about the size of a shoebox.

As a practical matter, the new law, which does not take effect until 2015, to give the industry time to adapt, will mostly affect egg production. No veal is currently produced in California, and the state’s only large pig producer has already adopted humane treatment standards voluntarily.

The impact on California’s large egg industry—20 million hens produce 5 billion eggs in the state every year—was hotly debated during the election campaign. Egg producers say the added costs of allowing hens room to move around could put them out of business. Animal welfare advocates, who drafted and campaigned for Proposition 2, respond that retailers and consumers are likely to demand and be willing to pay somewhat more for eggs that are produced more humanely. Time will tell.

California is known as a “trend-setter,” and standards adopted in the Golden State often spread quickly to the rest of the United States. Egg producers, pig farmers and veal producers from across the country therefore tried very hard to prevent passage of Proposition 2. They called themselves “Californians for Safe Food” and claimed that letting chickens roam free would expose them to diseases like avian influenza and threaten public health. They spent $9 million on advertising against the measure. Animal welfare advocates spent almost as much on ads and sent thousands of young volunteers out to campaign door-to-door, to urge a “yes” vote.

In the end, the voters rejected industry fear tactics and voted for more humane treatment of food animals, approving Proposition 2 by a 63-37 percent margin.

Does this mean Americans are maturing, ethically? I asked Peter Singer, a bioethicist at Princeton University. What Proposition 2 and similar measures show, he said, is that given a chance to vote on it, Americans are just as likely to support humane treatment as Europeans are. Singer thinks differences between the EU and the US on these issues more likely reflect political factors. For instance, in the EU, governments tend to be more responsive to the will of the public than they are here, for various reasons.

In the end, I conclude that I was wrong. Americans and Europeans are both evolving ethically at similar rates.

That’s my view from here in New York.

Feel free to respond to this column at info@schuttelaar.nl.

Ned Groth