Bradley Miller: Blame Humane Society for cooped-up egg-laying hens

At this very moment, millions of egg-laying hens are locked in cramped cages throughout California. But wait: Didn’t voters overwhelmingly enact a ballot measure six years ago that outlawed those cages?

No. Many just thought they did. Sponsors of Proposition 2 promised voters that it would ban all egg industry cages statewide by Jan. 1. But that never happened.

Instead, the state’s egg industry has simply been investing in new cages, as well as modifying old ones. This obscene reversal of voter intent was made possible by the determined negligence of Proposition 2’s sponsor, the Humane Society of the United States.

In his recent commentary (“High time to eliminate the cage confinement of egg-laying hens,” Page 1D, June 7), Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society bemoans the failure of Proposition 2 to free hens from cages. Stunningly, Shapiro fails to mention that it was his own group that wrote the measure and which is responsible for its content.

The Humane Society was repeatedly warned by the Humane Farming Association and many other animal advocates that the continued use of cages would be the legacy of Proposition 2 unless its fatally flawed language was corrected prior to putting it on the ballot.

At the time, there was ample opportunity to make clear in the initiative that cages would be prohibited. At the very least, Proposition 2 needed to specify exactly how much space would be required per hen. Sadly, all those warnings were ignored as the Humane Society marched ahead with a hopelessly vague and utterly unenforceable measure.

Now, six years later, the chickens have come home to roost. And, unsurprisingly, they’re being put in cages. Worse still, in the years since Proposition 2’s passage, the Humane Society has flip-flopped on the issue of cages. It even joined with the egg industry’s leading trade association, United Egg Producers, in pushing for federal legislation that would pre-empt state laws and, you guessed it, establish modified cages as a national standard.

To distract from its failure to eliminate egg industry cages through Proposition 2, the Humane Society now claims the $10 million spent on the campaign was still worth it because Proposition 2 got rid of “veal crates.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Not one single veal calf is, or ever was, affected by Proposition 2. In fact, there haven’t been any veal crates in California since the 1990s. Inserting a reference to veal calves in the measure was done simply to gain votes and to achieve a symbolic, albeit empty, victory.

There are, however, still many other calves kept in crates so small that they cannot turn around, as defined in Proposition 2. They are dairy calves known as replacement heifers. Why is that still allowed? Because, despite the objections of many animal advocates, those calves were excluded from the ballot measure.

In other words, Proposition 2 sought to ban veal crates that had not existed for years, while explicitly allowing the use of crates that did exist and still do.

After years of waiting for its implementation, Proposition 2 is finally being recognized, and discarded, for what it is – an empty vessel of false promises, wasted resources and squandered opportunity.

The inescapable reality is this: Had Proposition 2 actually contained what backers claimed, California would be cage-free at this very moment. The Humane Society has no one to blame for that but itself.

This story was originally published June 15, 2015 at 9:22 AM with the headline "Bradley Miller: Blame Humane Society for cooped-up egg-laying hens."