You wouldn't be able to move, so your muscles and bones would deteriorate. Your feet would become lacerated. You would go insane. That's precisely what happens to laying hens.

The Humane Society of the United States announced that a federal judge has ordered a trial in a federal legal case we brought against a polluting egg factory farm in the Central Valley of California.

The general answer for agriculture is that it cannot stand in place. It also cannot hope to gain the trust of consumers when it defends outright cruelty and abuse that the law should forbid.

In an agreement forged Wednesday, we were able to come to an agreement where all three parties have committed to recommend the enactment of a series of eight landmark reforms on animal welfare.

I just stepped away from a press conference in the Cabinet Room of Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland where he, Ohio Farm Bureau official Jack Fisher and I announced a historic agreement on animal welfare in the state.

There is big news concerning an ongoing class action lawsuit accusing the nation's major battery cage egg producers of conspiring to use questionable animal welfare standards.

The top egg producers in the nation are treating animals in ways that are unconscionable. But there is an alternative. Many consumers, supermarkets, restaurants, and food service providers demand that egg producers convert to cage-free systems.

Old ways of viewing animals as commodities and objects are stubborn, and so are many of the people who defend the status quo.

Animal welfare should be part of the Corporate Social Responsibility portfolio for any major corporation, and increasingly, companies are heeding the call.