Causecast

By Wayne Pacelle, the President and CEO
of the Humane Society of the United States

Friends, take a bow. Open the window and give out a whoop. Don’t hold
back. Let fly the corks.

In big, bold, indelible letters, you just wrote history. Proposition 2
passed with an overwhelming majority (now more than 62 percent, with
40 percent of the vote in), despite a massive, multi-million dollar
campaign by the opponents.

Life is going to get better for millions of farm animals.

And that’s thanks to so very many of you—those of you who voted for
California’s Prop 2, those of you who donated time and money and
support in the campaign, as well as the countless others of you who
cheered from other states. This is the most ambitious ballot measure
for animals ever undertaken. The energy that propelled us to victory
was incredible—and that’s not overstatement. From the thousands of
people who helped gather the petition signatures to put Prop 2 on the
ballot to those who staffed the phone banks and knocked on doors to
get out the vote, this was a show of grassroots might.

As a result, you’ve brought forth a new, more compassionate age.

Giving farm animals a little extra room to stretch their limbs, to
move like animals should, is a small matter for us humans. But it’s a
very big thing for a hen who would otherwise be confined with a
half-dozen other birds in a cage about as big as a computer monitor
for her whole life. It’s a really big thing for a sow who would
otherwise be stuck in a crate so small she couldn’t turn around. It’s
a way big thing for a calf who would spend life chained inside a
miserably tiny crate.

Prop 2 will phase out those inexcusable confinement systems and usher
in a new era. No state in the U.S. and no Agribusiness titan anywhere
in the nation can overlook this mandate: people do not want their farm
animals treated with wanton cruelty.

This proposition follows less sweeping but still significant ballot
measures passed in Florida and Arizona in recent years. The trend is
unmistakable, and it’s time for agriculture and those other businesses
in the food chain to drop the last of their opposition and implement
the future, starting now. That’s what animals deserve; that’s what
voters insist upon. At The Humane Society of the United States, we’ll
be ready to go to work tomorrow to make it happen.

Let me say plainly: We’ll engage constructively with farmers and
businesses that take responsible steps to improve the welfare of
animals. The others, unfortunately, will learn their lessons the hard
way—beginning with the wrath of consumers. There is no valor in
defending the abuse of animals.

For now, though, grab someone close by and give them a hug. In
disturbing economic times against a deceitful, fear-mongering $9
million campaign directed by the regressive egg industry, millions of
California voters chose stewardship, responsibility, mercy, care and
selflessness.