Deal Brokered for Ohio Livestock

Earlier this year, I wrote a few pieces about Ohioans for Humane Farms, a group seeking to get an initiative on the statewide ballot to impose some much-needed regulatory reforms on the state's new Livestock Care Standards Board. In a nutshell, Ohio voters last year passed "Issue 2," a ballot referendum creating the Livestock Board (composed of political appointees) and giving it sweeping powers over livestock farming in Ohio. Animal advocates, including the Humane Society of the United States, opposed the measure, largely out of fear that appointees to the board would be far more sympathetic to big agribusiness interests than they would be to animal welfare.

Enter Ohioans for Humane Farms, who decided to fight fire with fire, introducing their own proposed referendum this year, which would have tied the Livestock Board's hands in an animal-friendly way. Among the proposed reforms: a ban on battery cages and breeding pens, keeping "downer cows" (animals too sick or injured to stand) out of the food supply, and a ban on strangulation as a method of euthanasia. To make it happen, they needed to get around 600,000 petition signatures by last week.

But now, it turns out that the signatures weren't strictly necessary, with news of a deal brokered between Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, the Ohio Farm Bureau (representing your big agricultural types) and the HSUS (representing folks who would like to see animals treated with respect and dignity). In exchange for keeping the proposed reforms off the ballot, agribusiness is agreeing to a handful of key reforms, including:

• Banning gestation crates for hogs in new facilities, starting in 2011 (existing hog farms have 15 years to give up their gestation crates);
• Suspension of permitting for new battery cage confinement facilities for egg farmers;
• Banning veal crates by 2017;
• The aforementioned strangulation ban;
• Banning transport of "downer cows" for slaughter;
• New felony-level penalties for cockfighting;
• New legislation focused on puppy mills; and
• Banning ownership of certain dangerous exotic animals as pets.

Reviews are, to say the least, mixed. As you'd expect, HSUS is calling it "the single biggest ever animal welfare package" in, well, ever. Ohio's Farm Bureau calls it "a milestone." Farm Sanctuary, a group I have a lot of respect for, thinks the reforms "represent important progress for farm animals and other animals in Ohio."

Other folks are less than thrilled. The Animal Agriculture Alliance, opining in Pork magazine, thinks they got sold out. According to the AAA, "Undoubtedly, the battle over the threatened ballot initiative would have been expensive and unpleasant- but it would have also sent a strong message to HSUS that the agriculture community is united and committed to protecting the rights of farmers and ranchers."

Of course Pork and the AAA are not friends of ours; they're more the "kill 'em fast and nasty" types. But surely, animal people like us are happy, right?

Not exactly. David Cassuto, a respected animal law blogger calls it "just not nearly good enough," citing the long period of time for the reforms to be fully enacted - such as the 15 years that existing hog farmers have to ditch gestation crates.

Compromise, by it's very nature, isn't always pretty. You always leave some stuff on the table. Without a doubt, this is a quick and easy PR win for HSUS (and to be fair, for the Ohio Farm Bureau); they get to brag on the compromise, and probably raise a little money from it. Big organizations like HSUS need a constant stream of those victories to justify their existence to the folks who fund them.

But in the end, it is, or ought to be, about the animals we're trying to protect. Tomorrow, we'll get a little deeper into what we did and didn't get on behalf of animals in Ohio.

Photo credit: psuedoplacebo