Chickens are at the center of an unlikely $15 million electoral battle underway in California, pitting agri-business tycoons against a coalition of environmental, public health, and animal welfare advocates.
This January, "Sam," an undercover investigator for the animal protection group Mercy for Animals, visited a Gemperle Enterprises egg farm in Merced County, California. What he saw horrified him-chickens packed six or eight to a single cage, each with less space than an A4 sheet of paper. The cages were stacked several stories high, forcing birds in the lower rungs to live out their lives in the excrement of birds above.