The USDA and Big Ag (the people who brought California the plan of spraying pesticide on human beings in the 2007 LBAM debacle) have conspired in order to pour millions of dollars in funding into blocking California Proposition 2, up for the vote in November 2008. What is it that Prop 2 proposes that factory farmers object to? Here is a summary of the proposition:

The California Secretary of State’s summary from the Official Voter Information Guide of Proposition 2 is as follows:[1]
“STANDARDS FOR CONFINING FARM ANIMALS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Requires that certain farm animals be allowed, for the majority of every day, to fully extend their limbs or wings, lie down, stand up and turn around.

Yes, opponents of Prop 2 do not want farm animals to be able to move around and are going so far as to claim that enabling animals to perform simple functions such as standing up, sitting down, lifting a wing or stretching a leg will endanger public health and put the ‘industry’ out of business.

Anyone who was sprayed with Checkmate in 2007, or lived under the threat of being sprayed with Checkmate, already has a good acquaintance with the way Big Ag operates and will likely be unsurprised to learn that they would be opposed to more humane treatment for farm animals. After all, they couldn’t even manage to understand that human beings deserve humane treatment when they exposed thousands of Central Coast families to an aerial pesticide assault which left hundreds of innocent people gravely ill and nearly killed two small children. You know how these people operate. You know the money deals and the lies and the robotic response to all requests for humane treatment of fellow beings. You aren’t really surprised.

What May Surprise You
Trillions have been spent in ad campaigns over the years which have left the American public with the vague and comfortable idea that meat, milk and eggs come from ‘happy cows’ and chickens living on ’sunshine farms’. This pretty picture is in contrast to the real lives of today’s farm animals, and in the spirit of telling the truth which we have always upheld here at Vegan Reader, I present these facts for you about the real lives of some of California’s most innocent and voiceless creatures.

Where Do My Eggs and Chicken Meat Come From?

-99% of the eggs eaten by Americans come from caged chickens.

-7-8 hens are typically crammed into 18″x20″ wire cages

-The birds cannot lift even one wing at a time in these conditions. The normal wingspan of a single chicken is 30 inches

-Cages are stacked layer upon layer to the ceiling of warehouses holding tens of thousands of birds. Droppings from the birds fall on the birds below, with each successive lower layer of birds becoming more encrusted with filth than the layer above it.

-Their claws often grow fast to the wires beneath them – the Big Ag solution to this is to cut off their feet

- They never see actual daylight but are kept for prolonged periods in total darkness or relentless bright lights in order to disrupt their normal hormonal patterns and induce them to shed their feathers

- Because these conditions drive the birds mad, they begin to peck one another in their insanity

- In order to prevent pecking, female chicks are forced through an assembly line where machines cut off their beaks (a process called de-beaking)

- Because male chicks are seen as valueless to egg farmers, when the babies emerge from their shells they are tossed into a plastic bag in heaps where they suffocate or are thrown live into a huge meat grinder. The number of baby male chicks killed in this way every year is greater than the number of human beings living in the United States. The remains of the dead baby chicks are then fed back to their mothers as ‘feed’.

- The terms ‘free range’, ‘natural’ and other happy euphemisms are not regulated in any way. They are advertising terms created to deceive the public. Again, if you eat eggs, there is a 99% chance that they were taken from chickens kept in this way.

- Chickens raised for their meat endure the same conditions from day one of their lives.

- Chicken manure is one of the main components of the feed given to chickens. Other components include factory wastes and euthanized pets obtained from kill-policy animal shelters and vivisection labs

- At the time they are slaughtered, 90% of chickens in the U.S. are infected with Leukosis (chicken cancer)

- Estimates for the number of US chickens contaminated with salmonella range from 20%-80%

- At slaughter, chickens are gutted with hooks which often break the linings of their intestines, contaminating the carcasses with fecal matter. At this point, the carcass is placed in a tub of water for an hour where it basically stews in the fecal matter and takes on water weight to bring higher market prices. The chicken is then packaged for sale.

Where Does My Beef and Milk Come From?

- Milk cows are kept in a permanent state of milk production by being constantly, artificially forced to bear children they are never allowed to care for

- Within 24 hours of being born, baby calves are taken from their mothers and confined in crates that do not allow them to move their limbs, stand up, or lie down in a natural manner. This is done to keep them from forming muscles so that their flesh can be sold as ‘veal’

- Calves are not given their mother’s milk. It is taken away from them to be given to the offspring of another species – human beings. Calves are, instead, fed a powdered formula. The truth on the other side of every glass of milk is a veal calf, kept immobile, and slaughtered without having ever known its mother or the natural light of day.

- Dairy cows are fed a constant diet of antibiotics and other drugs. These drugs are present in the milk they produce.

- At the end of her life, spent providing milk to humans, the humans respond to this relationship by slaughtering the dairy cow

- Most Americans assume that there is a law enforcing that cows must be dead before being cut into pieces in slaughterhouses. There is no such law. Fully conscious cows are routinely hung upside down, skinned and dismembered by slaughterhouse workers as has been documented by films aired on NBC News and Dateline.

- Ground beef is the #1 source of E. Coli infections, with some 200 people being diagnosed with the often-fatal pathogen every single day in the U.S.

Where Does My Pork Come From?

- Mother pigs are confined in cages little bigger than their bodies. Throughout their pregnancies they are not allowed to freely stand up, lie down, turn their heads or stretch their limbs. They are kept by the thousands in warehouses, much like chickens

- They are immediately deprived of their children which drives them insane, causing them to scream, groan and bite other pigs. Often, they are driven to cannibalism. Big Ag’s solution to this is to break their teeth.

- Baby piglets tails are cut off without any type of anaesthetic to prevent them from biting one another’s tails in the madness that ensues when they are confined in dark, factory warehouses, without any room to turn or move about – by the thousands.

- Pigs, whose sense of smell is so keen that they can detect the presence of edible roots under the earth, are forced to stand in their own fecal matter, day after day, week after week, until they are hauled out for slaughter

- Because they have been bred for obesity, many pigs have deformed spines and broken legs. If they are unable to walk in line to the slaughter house conveyer belts, the accepted method of killing them is to beat them to death with lead pipes or to hoist them up and smash their heads off the concrete floors. There is no law which requires pigs to be dead before they are dismembered, thus, many of them are cut up while still awake and alive.

- At slaughter, 75% of the pigs eaten by Americans have pneumonia. As with cows and chickens, the flesh of pigs is contaminated with pathogens and fecal matter when it is processed and packaged for sale

No One Likes To Think Of These Things
There have been times in my life when I have felt overwhelmed by the suffering of these trusting and totally defenseless animals who are owned, tortured and then slaughtered by Big Ag farmers by the millions every day. Who would want to think about this?

But, of course, it’s because we don’t want to think about it, and because such truths and sights are kept carefully hidden from the public by skilled marketers, that these horrific actions are allowed to take place, every day.

Humans have long kept and slaughtered domesticated animals, it’s true. But never before, in the history of man, has a system been created like the one currently operating across California and across the United States. This is a systematic process for confining, abusing and killing innocent creatures who live without ever knowing the earth. They know only the stench of the factory warehouse buildings, pain, terror, sorrow and death. Never before in history has such a shameful situation existed on such a scale, and anyone choosing to purchase the products of this industry is, sadly, supporting its continuance.

What Will California Proposition 2 Do?
You can read the full text of Prop 2 here. To my understanding, Prop 2 is simply asking for slightly larger confinement devices for chickens, pigs and veal calves. It doesn’t put an end to any of the other facts mentioned above, but it has some potential to slightly lessen the misery of these helpless animals by giving them the ability to stand up, sit down and extend their limbs. It does something for the animals.

Big Ag is pouring in their millions to stop the Proposition from passing, not because they can’t afford to buy larger confining devices, but because, I believe, the very existence of such a proposition might be the beginning of Californians learning the truth about the suffering of the animals who are ‘processed’ so that meat and dairy products can appear on the American table. Any proposition which suggests that farm animals might be deserved of humane treatment is a major threat to an industry which depends upon society viewing living creatures as mere objects.

Big Ag has come up with all kinds of absurd claims that treating animals humanely will destroy their industry, and has even gone so far as to threaten public health hazards if, for example, chickens were allowed to live outside. They warn that by being outside, chickens might contract avian flu from wild birds. They are very careful not to state that factory farms are the actual health hazard. By confining thousands of animals in overcrowded enclosures where they are forced to stand in their own excrement and where every natural need is neglected, factory farms are breeding grounds for the very diseases which causes literally millions of cases of human illness every year. The arguments being put forth by Big Ag are self-serving, manipulative and unworthy of consideration.

Yes On Prop 2 is the citizen group spearheading the pro-vote for this proposition. You might like to visit their website to learn more about why so many people think this vote will be so important.

But, I would like to make a suggestion beyond simply voting Yes on Prop 2. I would encourage you to think about the fact that, living in California, not one of us needs to be dependent upon the torment and death of animals in order to find nourishment. We are not a small tribe of peoples living in the desert or near the north pole, reliant upon animal flesh as our only available means of sustenance. It just isn’t that way here any more.

It has been nearly 20 years now since I learned the truth about Big Ag and vowed I would never again derive sustenance from such needless misery. Yes, for nearly 2 decades now, I have lived by eating a plant-based diet, and I have eaten very, very well. If you could see the delicious, fragrant, colorful, nutrient-packed dishes I will be eating for dinner tonight, you would have no worry that I am living a deprived life because there is no meat, no milk, no eggs on my table. The only thing absent from my family’s table is the support of an industry that is willing to torture living animals with one hand while it is pouring pesticides on human children with the other. That is not something I can, in good conscience, give my money to. It is not something that most Californians would choose to support, if they only knew the truth about the lives of today’s farm animals and the true behavior of the modern agricultural industry.

It can take real courage to face hard truths like the ones I’ve listed for you in this article. Like most American children, I was raised by a loving mother who felt that animal products were essential to human health, and that she was taking good care of me by feeding me the output of this dreadful industry. Most people, especially parents, sincerely believe they are doing the very best for their children by feeding them meat and dairy products because they have been skillfully lead by the Meat and Dairy industries to believe in this firmly. No humane person would blame people for their loving attempts to nourish themselves and their loved ones well.

The blame, in my opinion, all belongs on the shoulders of an industry which makes righteous-sounding proclamations about dedication to humane treatment of animals while stealing newborns from mothers who are indentured to a life of producing milk for a completely different species while trillions of dollars are made. And, it only adds to the real evil of the situation when these ‘farmers’ hire PR experts to aid them in deceiving a trusting public who is looking for good answers to good nutrition.

The truth is that factory farming is robbing us of our health, destroying the natural resources of our endangered planet and engaging our participation in acts which are baldly inhumane. I know it does not deserve my family’s support and I am sharing these thoughts with you in hopes that you can take a serious look at whether it deserves yours.

So, while I believe that Proposition 2 is a step in the right direction in that it recognizes that living beings have an inherent right to be able to use their limbs, it is only a very tiny first step, and I am hoping, for the sake of your own respect for the gift of life, you may wish to take some further steps along that road.

If you would like to learn more about the hidden truth of the factory farm and its toll on America’s health and habitat, I highly recommend reading The Food Revolution by John Robbins.

John’s first book, Diet For A New America was pivotal in my decision to adopt a plant-based diet, and I would like to add for the benefit of all the LBAM veterans, John was deeply concerned about the spraying that happened last year in California. If you’ve lost your patience with CDFA after dealing with their tactics, you’re really going to ‘get’ John Robbins’ books. For so many Californians, the LBAM disaster was an introduction to the behind-the-scenes operations of our nation’s most powerful industries. I guarantee, if you read The Food Revoltion the whole situation of what’s going on in our country is going to become a whole lot clearer.

I hope that reading this article was worthy of your time.