The People Have Spoken: YES! on Prop 2

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.

© iStockphoto

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 filing cabinet 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.

With hundreds of  Prop 2 supporters gathered in Los Angeles.

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.  photos © Tony Chang

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.

Posted by Wayne Pacelle, President HSUS on 05 November 2008 at 3:00 AM