Oprah Gets It (California, Rest of Country to Follow?)
She’s finally gone and done it: Oprah has dived into the dark world of food politics — again. After the massive palaver that erupted back in 1996 when, as a result of the mad cow fiasco, she gave up burgers and got sued by the meat industry). Oprah has laid fairly low when it comes to food politics. But last week, “How We Treat The Animals We Eat,” an investigative report by Lisa Ling featured on Oprah’s show, opened up a Pandora’s box of questions that will, with any luck, prod consumers all over the country into buying better eggs.
More importantly, it might help Californians pass Prop 2, an initiative that aims to phase out battery cages by 2015 and one the NYT’s Nick Kristof has called (prompting Oprah to produce the show) the most important election this November that you’ve never heard of. Animal welfare isn’t necessarily one of my biggest bugaboos, but the measures Prop 2 introduces are so elementary to food safety, quality, and flavor that it’s fairly appalling they aren’t already in effect.
The segment on Oprah was fair. Probably still smarting from the last time she ended up on the wrong side of Big Ag, Winfrey gave farmers both big and small a chance to have their say. The industry used the low prices for which they can produce eggs as their defense for running battery farms, suggesting that Americans didn’t want to spend the money on better food. “In all likelihood, [if Prop. 2 passes] eggs will come from outside the U.S. – Mexico, even overseas as far as China,” warned Julie Buckner, an anti-Prop-2 lobbyist.
Reporter Lisa Ling, who produced “How We Treat the Animals We Eat,” went to visit an industrial egg farm with 87,000 chickens. “Words could hardly convey her revulsion at the stench, but the look on Ling’s face said it all; factory farm egg production in America is an abomination,” wrote Kerry Trueman on Living Liberally. Then the small-scale farmers (along with Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society) came on to make the case for Prop 2. They likened factory-farm chicken cages to being stuck in an elevator with six people for your entire life (they left out: with your nose chopped off). And as for the cost argument, they simply said that eggs being as cheap as we’ve been accustomed to paying is not normal and not humane (they left out: a study showed it only costs an extra penny per egg to raise chickens humanely).
Will Oprah’s discussion of battery-chicken farming cause the kind of rippling effect that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s TV show earlier this year did? Judging by her influence on other matters, I think it can. Whether or not Prop 2 passes could be an indication.
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Comments
I'm glad Oprah gets it ... because I sure don't. Look, I'm all for the ethical treatment of animals. But as someone who lives in Indiana where it's illegal to use fireworks (wink, wink) but totally legal to produce, sell, and transport fireworks ... I don't see Prop 2 as much more than window dressing. It's one thing to shut down the factory-farms in your own state ... but unless you make it illegal to sell products from factory-farms ... all you are doing is pawning the responsibility off on someone else.
Posted by:liptster |October 28, 2008 7:54 AM
My guess is the reason Wayne Pacelle didn’t mention “noses being chopped off” is that Prop 2 will not ban so-called “beak trimming” – which is where the farmer cuts off the sensitive tip of the hen’s beak. No, Prop 2 is not perfect, but it will do a lot to redress the increasingly egregious privations that factory farmers have subjected upon farmed animals. Those of us in California who support Prop 2 believe it is torture to cram hens into grim wire cages with six or more other birds, leaving each hen less room than a sheet of letter-sized paper on which to live. That’s not even enough room to spread a single wing. Such confinement is cruel to animals and it jeopardizes human health.
Prop 2 is a modest measure that will hold corporate agriculture to basic standards of humanity by allowing egg-laying hens, pregnant sows and veal calves to fully extend their limbs and turn around. To learn more about this ballot initiative, please visit www.YesOnProp2.org.
Posted by:Mark |October 28, 2008 9:43 AM