In my post titled "Fate of the Titans," I told the story of Tantalus, a Titan punished with eternal hunger and thirst because he tried to trick his guests into eating his son, a cannibalism I suggest, currently forced upon many of the animals that we eat to our mutual detriment. In another post, "The Dollar Tree," I noted the American need for cheap goods and the way that price, as value, deforms both our calculations about the cost of things and the moral decisions implicit in any transaction.
Economics, for better or worse, is an important model of relationship that involves all of our values. It's not just about price. It's about fairness, sustainability, beauty, respect, and mercy too. One crucial intersection of value and values, is food. We all need to eat, and we need to consider the safety, politics, and morality of food, what is consumed, how it is raised, who eats it, and at what price.
The vast majority of farm animals in this country are treated with the kind of cruelty that only the cheap could stomach. Voters in California can assert a better set of values by supporting Proposition 2.
"Proposition 2, co-sponsored by the Humane Society and Farm
Sanctuary, the biggest farm-animal-rights group in the United States,
focuses on what are considered the worst animal-confinement systems in
factory farms. The ballot initiative, which voters will decide on Nov.
4, requires that by 2015 farm animals be able to stand up, lie down,
turn around and fully extend their limbs. In effect that translates
into a ban on the two-foot-wide crates that tightly confine pregnant
pigs and calves raised for veal — a space so small that they can’t turn
around. And it would eliminate so-called battery cages where four or
more hens share a space about the size of a file drawer.
Pete Singer a professor of bioethics at Princeton University and a leading figure in the animal rights movement, compares Proposition 2 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, calling Proposition 2 the “other historic ballot this November.” If it passes, it would affect more animals — almost 20 million — than any ballot measure has in U.S. history.
Because California is the largest agriculture state in the country, and often a trend-setter on social issues, the ballot is a bellwether for farm-animal-welfare reform nationwide. Many experts predict that if Proposition 2 becomes law it will create a ripple effect, putting pressure on other states to pass similar reforms and pushing major food corporations to go crate-free and cage-free."
(excerpted from "The Barnyard Strategist" by Maggie Jones, New York Times Magazine October 24, 2008). Read the whole article
It's great to have a ballot initiative and I hope the success of this one in California provides support for many others like it. But all of us make decisions, daily, about what we eat, and we decide what we will learn more about and what we can afford to ignore. Mercy, mercy-- what is raised with a little tenderness is easier to chew, and kindness makes it easier to swallow.
