It’s an exciting time to be an animal activist in California. Next week, a large coalition of groups including Mercy For Animals will launch a historic ballot initiative campaign to ban some of the worst factory farm abuses. The newly proposed Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act would spare countless animals from lives of extreme confinement in battery cages, gestation crates, and veal crates by outlawing the production and sale of meat and eggs made through these cruel systems in California.
This measure could potentially be one of the biggest legal gains for farmed animals in our lifetime—but it needs your help to get on the ballot.
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The measure would provide important upgrades to California’s landmark anti-confinement law, Proposition 2, which voters overwhelmingly passed a decade ago. Proposition 2 paved the way for other laws like it nationwide, and since its passage, virtually every major food retailer in the country has adopted requirements even more robust than those of the California law. And last year, 78 percent of Massachusetts voters enacted a measure codifying these stronger industry standards.
Unfortunately, most pork and eggs produced and sold in California still come from animals kept in cruel cages and crates. This new ballot initiative would prevent this by establishing an explicit cage-free requirement and applying it not only to production but also to sale of these products in the state.
To give Californians a chance to vote on this landmark measure in 2018, we first have to collect 600,000 signatures from California voters over the next 180 days—that’s where you come in.
Luckily, the Golden State is on our side. A recent poll by Lake Research found that the measure is favored 72 to 15 among probable 2018 California voters, a margin of support greater than the one enjoyed by Proposition 2. Once we get the required signatures, the measure is likely to pass.
Over the next month, we will hold campaign kickoff events at two dozen locations to train volunteers to help change the law for farmed animals through grassroots activism. To attend a kickoff event near you, please sign up here.
Together we can ensure California remains a leader on animal welfare by ending the era of extreme confinement, once and for all.
