Bentham's Newsletter
The federal government is carrying out a multi-part war on overwhelmingly popular state-level animal welfare laws. These laws include California’s Prop 12 and Massachusetts’ Question 3 which require egg laying hens, pigs, and other animals to have enough space to lie down, stand up, extend their limbs, and turn around. In other words, the federal government is trying to outlaw efforts by states to ban locking animals in cages too small to turn around in.
Of course, were a person to lock a dog in a crate too small to turn around in for its entire life, they’d be unquestionably jailed for animal abuse. But the federal government, under the pay of big agriculture, is trying to mandate that states allow animals to be treated like unfeeling objects, and subjected to grotesque cruelty.
Pigs are smarter than dogs! Does a pregnant mother deserve this? We wouldn’t treat serial killers this way, and we should not treat innocent animals that way either, whose crime is only having body parts that taste nice. America does not suffer from an excess of burdensome animal cruelty laws, but from a shocking absence of animal cruelty laws. Requiring animals be allowed to stand and move is just about the most minimal requirement conceivable. And across most of the country, locking an animal in a crate for its entire life where it can never turn around, stretch, or see the sun is perfectly legal. Such a dystopian life is the reality for most of the nation’s animals.
