Clucking Not True

Last Monday's San Francisco Chronicle (August 24) front page story "Egg prices soaring as production falls" reported a now oft asserted but completely Bizarro world assertion that California's Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (2008's Proposition 2 which was passed by the voters and is now law) has made the world a nice place for farmed chickens. Come on.

Yes, it was a good thing to increase the size of cages required to house the millions of birds confined in California's industrial farms and that was the Proposition's principal purpose and accomplishment. Yes, along with many other animal welfare organizations in the State, the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA worked for its passage. But just look at the facts and it's obvious that one would have to accept a pretty weak definition of kindness to say the act created a humane standard.

As reported in the article, the law increased the required space allotted to each egg-laying hen from 67 square inches (pre-Prop 2) to 116 square inches (post-Prop 2). Close to double, which sounds fantastic, until you take a look at what 116 square inches actually is.

The piece of paper your printer spits out is 8½ inches by 11 inches. That equals 93½ square inches. A pre-Prop 2 chicken had less than the room taken up by a piece of white paper on which to walk around. Today's chicken gets a little more than that same piece of paper's space.

Better, sure. But humane...?