By a vote of 52 to 13 in the state assembly, and 32 to 1 in the senate, New Jersey legislators last month passed a bill to ban a particular form of cruelty to pigs in factory farms, extending the smallest of mercies to the humblest of creatures. Senate Bill 998 prohibits “the confinement, in an enclosure, of any sow during gestation in a manner that prevents the sow from turning around freely, lying down, standing up, or fully extending the limbs of the animal.” Shall a pregnant pig be granted space enough to stretch her legs and turn around? The question awaits deliberations in the governor’s office, where, as The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf writes, “a moral dilemma is unfolding.”
If Governor Chris Christie signs this bill into law, he has been warned, it won’t be taken well in Iowa. Read more…
Tag: factory farming
Echoing the kind of reasoning we’ve seen in Eating Animals, Bill Maher, in an Op Ed for the NYT, asks:
WOULD you cram a dog into a crate for her entire life, never letting her out, until you took her to the pound to kill her?
Of course you wouldn’t, and yet that’s effectively what happens to most mother pigs in this country. They spend their lives in what are called gestation crates, tiny stalls that house pregnant sows. They cannot even turn around, and are immobilized in these crates until they are taken to the slaughterhouse.
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