Gilroy 35 Miles Over the Hill From Santa Cruz | HSUS to take Prop 2-like action to Ohio
April 6, 2009
By: Jennifer Fiala
For The VIN News Service
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is taking its campaign to
eliminate tight housing quarters for farm animals on the road. Next
stop: Ohio.
In February, HSUS leaders Wayne Pacelle and Paul Shapiro sat down with
agriculture groups and the Ohio Veterinary Medical Association (OVMA)
and announced plans to bring California's costly and contentious
Proposition 2 to the state that ranks second in egg production and ninth
in swine, nationally. The group intends to put a citizen referendum to
ban sow gestation stalls, veal crates and battery cages for layer hens
on the November 2010 ballot.
But first, the activist group is reaching out in hopes that a deal can
be negotiated, and it appears that veterinary medicine will play a major
role in how that might take place.
For now, all sides say they're willing to engage in a dialogue. Shapiro,
senior director of HSUS' Factory Farming Campaign, says that it's in the
agriculture industry's best interest to compromise on imposing
free-range housing requirements for livestock and hens. After all, when
it comes to successfully taking its message to voters, HSUS is a
financial and political powerhouse with an undefeated record. Since the
group started its campaign to change agriculture's controversial
confinement standards, five states have imposed bans on housing systems
deeply entrenched in U.S. agriculture.
Why should this matter to the veterinary profession? Veterinarians spend
their lives promoting the well-being of animals. Yet at the same time,
activists appear to be guiding America's attitudes on animal welfare,
experts say, working to erode veterinary medicine's authority on the
topic and divide the profession. It's a situation that played out last
year as Proposition 2 drove a wedge through California's community of
DVMs. While food-animal practitioners tend to take a more conservative
approach that backs longstanding agricultural housing practices,
small-animal veterinarians often are more open to changing a system that
some say abuses animals.
But these characterizations are mere stereotypes; veterinarian's
attitudes on the issues can run the gamut, regardless of professional
concentration, and such varying viewpoints have challenged major
veterinary organizations. While the American Veterinary Medical
Association (AVMA) carefully weighs scientific evidence to establish
opinions on what's in the best interest of animals, HSUS and its cohorts
are preening their message, using emotion to drown out the more moderate
voice of organized veterinary medicine.
For agriculture, the HSUS sound bite is hard to compete with: Animals
need to be afforded enough room to turn around and extend their limbs.
"The reality is that regardless of what type of state we're talking
about, the public agrees with this. The agribusiness trade groups are
very likely to lose because the message is that basic," HSUS' Shapiro
insists.
While many DVMs are on board with that perspective, others with
agriculture and veterinary medicine think the statement oversimplifies
issues that are more complicated. They argue that implementing
alternative housing such as free-range or pen systems presents a huge
and costly changeover for agribusinesses, one that could include the
closure of farms, the loss millions of jobs and a stiff hike in food
prices. Plus, such mandates merely trade one set of welfare concerns for
another. Animals housed in open systems are more vulnerable to disease,
parasite infestation and injury due to aggressive pen-mates. The system
also makes it more difficult track an animal's medical health and care,
AVMA officials contend.
What's more, those who liken HSUS to "PETA-light extremism" fear the
organization's fingerprints on agriculture housing bans are a precursor
to the group's ultimate agenda - to end animal ownership and remove meat
from the diets of Americans.
Dr. Jon Kingborg, a small-animal practitioner and former California
Veterinary Medical Association president, breaks down the issue's
complexities this way: "Veterinarians as individuals and veterinary
associations have a key role to play in educating these stakeholders,
whether it's the consumer or the person raising the animal for sale.
What we simply cannot do is just react to pictures of animals that
appear to be too crowded. But at the same time, it's absolutely a
reasonable goal to want animals to move around and get up and stretch
their limbs."
All agricultural housing systems have their strengths and weaknesses,
Klingborg adds.
"That's why I don't think veterinarians should be favoring one system
over another," he says. "Our job should be to watch and educate. I don't
think we should be handing out seals of approval like the ADA (American
Dental Association) gives to toothpaste."
On March 25, OVMA's food animal and legislative committees spent six
hours debating what a ban on production systems like sow gestation
stalls, battery cages and veal crates might mean for animal welfare and
agribusiness in the state. The only consensus reached was to explore the
issues with HSUS, says Jack Advent, OVMA executive director.
"What we do know is that if there is no dialogue, HSUS has stated that
they will simply collect the signatures they need to go to the ballot
where the electorate will decide on the issues," he says. "We don't want
to close the door to something like legislation, which could be far more
palatable than what might be on a ballot initiative."
Joe Cornely, spokesman for the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, is wary but
still willing to sit down with HSUS: "We never stop talking; we never
stop listening. But this will be tough. Agriculture isn't rocket
science. It's harder. It doesn't fit neatly and concisely on a bumper
sticker.
"This may be the single biggest challenge that the agricultural
community in Ohio has ever faced," Cornely adds. "It's a huge challenge
for our industry to be able to convey to a public without agriculture
knowledge the intricacies of what it takes to put meat on their plate
and milk in their glass. Who knows what will transpire if it comes to a
point where we have to face off against HSUS with voters on this?"
If history is any clue, the odds favor HSUS. Earlier this decade, humane
society officials laid the groundwork to spread animal confinement bans
nationwide by targeting states with little agriculture-based business
and where opposition to change might not be heavy. That strategy also
included banking on ballot referendums and appealing to the public
rather than legislation, which was more likely to come up against
lobbyist and lawmaker opposition.
In 2002, voters in Florida - one of 24 states that allow for citizen
referendum - became the nation's first to enact a ban on swine gestation
stalls after HSUS waged a two-year publicity campaign and gathered more
than 600,000 signatures to get the issue on the ballot. Five years
later, Arizona voters outlawed gestation stalls by 2012. It reportedly
cost Arizona's agriculture groups roughly $1.6 million in a failed bid
to combat the HSUS message. Both states have very little in terms of
swine operations.
In 2007, Oregon became the nation's third state to impose a swine
gestation stall ban, this time via the Legislature. The law, to be
phased in by 2012, cost "virtually nothing" to promote, Shapiro says,
because industry put up almost no fight and the Oregon Veterinary
Medical Association took a neutral stance. By all accounts, Senate Bill
694's quiet enactment signaled industry's acceptance that swine stalls
would fall in small agriculture states, especially in light of Arizona's
costly battle. Last year, HSUS negotiated with Colorado's veterinary
profession and agriculture industry groups for a law to phase out swine
stalls and veal crates. The deal, Colorado veterinary leaders say, was
designed to stave off a ballot measure that also could have included a
ban on battery cages for laying hens.
Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signed the bill as Proposition 2 surfaced in
California, the largest agriculture state in the nation. For many
producers, the ballot measure was akin to agricultural Armageddon,
phasing in bans on three types of animal confinement: veal crates,
battery cages and sow gestation stalls. Each side spent an estimated $9
million in 11 media markets to promote their positions. Critics claimed
that the changes would wreak havoc on a state with a reported 20 million
laying hens producing 5 million eggs and that alternative, or free-range
housing systems created new problems for agriculture, such as disease
and parasite infestation.
The battle made its way deep into veterinary medicine, where a faction
of large-animal veterinarians railed against the California Veterinary
Medical Association's (CVMA) early support for Prop 2 and eventually
spun off to form the Association of California Veterinarians. Leaders of
the new group criticized the CVMA position by stating it alienated
food-animal veterinarians and pandered to animal welfare ideals guided
by a public that's overly influenced by activists. At the time, CVMA
official Dr. George Bishop countered
: "All we want to do is promote
science-based standards that are in line with our welfare polices. ...
We want to lead the way on welfare."
On Nov. 4, Proposition 2 passed with 63.5 percent of the vote. Increased
space requirements to house veal calves, egg-laying hens and pregnant
pigs will become operative on Jan. 1, 2015. Producers who do not comply
will face misdemeanor penalties.
Opponents of the new law claim that the vote has destroyed the future of
the state's egg industry, and many hope that a bill currently playing
out in the state Legislature will level the playing field for
California's producers by imposing free-range requirements on eggs
imported from other states.
Meanwhile, officials elsewhere are facing Prop 2's proliferation.
Peter Weber, executive director of the Illinois State Veterinary Medical
Association (IVMA) is relieved that an HSUS-backed bill mirroring Prop 2
failed last month to make it out of the Senate Agriculture Committee's
newly created Animal Welfare Subcommittee. "Illinois is huge in
agriculture; even urban and suburban legislators understand the
importance of agriculture to our economy," he says. "It was abundantly
clear that this bill plays to people's emotions. There just isn't the
science to back the need for it."
Weber echoes the AVMA stance ,
which argues that every agricultural housing system has its pros and
cons, and that scientific evidence shows that giving animals more room
does not necessarily translate to a better life.
Yet that position doesn't fly with those in the veterinary profession
who believe that such confinement practices are anti-welfare and
unethical. In a July 2008, letter to the Modesto Bee, CVMA
past-President Dr. Jeff Smith chided mainstream veterinary medicine's
conservative stance on such controversial issues, calling on his
colleagues to stand up for change "instead of being deemed irrelevant or
taken kicking and screaming to the eventual proper ethical outcome."
Still, what's at stake goes beyond the health and well-being of animals
and what's deemed fashionable in terms of welfare, Cornely says.
Agriculture is a $96-billion business in Ohio, with more than 1,000 food
companies operating in the state, employing an estimated one million
workers.
"HSUS is well funded, well organized and extremely committed," he says.
"If we're going to convince Ohio voters that we have a better idea for
animal welfare, we've got to get ready for this."
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