With all the talk about Proposition 8 and gay marriage, etc., ReligiousLiberty.TV has found a ballot proposition that it can support. (This may not reflect the views of all the members of the Advisory Panel.)
Bonnie Erbe at US News & World Report gives a good overview of California Proposition 2 which deals with animal cruelty in farming.
Leave it to California to once again lead the way on one of the most important social issues of our time. This time, it’s animal cruelty in factory farming. Next month, Californians will have the opportunity to ameliorate conditions for the millions of factory-farmed animals in that state. At factory (mass production) farms, animals from chickens to pigs and veal calves are crated in tiny spaces where some of them spend their entire suffering lives (more on that later.)
California’s Proposition 2 requires, according to the Los Angeles Times, “that confined cattle, pigs and chickens have enough space to lie down, stand up, turn around freely and extend their limbs. Because there are few veal producers in the state and the largest pork producer here has already said it would eliminate small crates, the initiative would apply to the 19 million laying hens in California.”
Doesn’t sound horrendous, does it, to give an animal enough room to stand up and move around? Can you imagine spending your entire life tied to your bed, unable to get up and move around? Even if you don’t care a whit about animals, consider what type of food animals living in intolerable situations produce. It isn’t pretty. Animals living in horrendous conditions suffer from stress as do we. When their bodies are rife with stress hormones, so is the food they produce. Guess what: animals’ stress hormones are not good for people, either. I have a saying: Animals bite back. If you eat them, they bite back and kill you by raising your cholesterol level and contributing to heart disease.
Read more at http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2008/10/14/california-animal-cruelty-could-be-cured-by-proposition-2.html