Eight years after the passage of the legislative mandate, New Jersey’s Department of Agriculture came up with definitions for “humane” standards that simply reinforced the cruel agribusiness status quo—including the use of veal crates, gestation crates and battery cages.
In declaring these institutions “not inhumane,” the department essentially gave blanket protection to the very factory farming practices that the New Jersey Legislature did not want to exclusively provide exemptions for.
In 2004, a broad coalition led by Farm Sanctuary responded by filing suit in the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey, alleging that the state’s Department of Agriculture had failed to establish “humane” standards of treatment for farm animals as required by the New Jersey Legislature in 1996 and instead sanctioned numerous inhumane factory farming practices.
The “humane” standards currently being challenged in court include:
- The confinement of pregnant pigs for most of their lives inside 2-foot-wide gestation crates that prevent them from even turning around.
- The intensive confinement and tethering of calves raised for veal.
- The mutilation of farm animals without anesthesia, including castration, debeaking, detoeing, and tail docking.
Much of the European Union already either outlaws these practices or is in the process of phasing them out. In the U.S., Florida, Oregon and Arizona have banned gestation crates, and Arizona has outlawed veal crates. In California, the nation’s largest agricultural state, a ballot initiative is pending to ban battery cages, as well as veal and gestation crates.
On Monday, March 10, the New Jersey Supreme Court, heard arguments from the coalition, which seeks a judicial declaration that factory farming practices cannot be considered humane simply because they are commonly used. The decision on this case is not expected for 30 to 60 days.
On April 29, 2008 the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production released the results of a two and a half year study, provides additional, compelling and irrefutable data supporting the challenge Farm Sanctuary has imposed on the New Jersey standards case. The report hits on the central argument that most livestock research is generated by land-grant colleges that are heavily endowed by the industry itself. The report concludes: “After reviewing the literature, visiting production facilities, and listening to producers themselves, the Commission believes that the most intensive confinement systems, such as restrictive veal crates, hog gestation pens, restrictive farrowing crates, and battery cages for poultry, all prevent the animal from a normal range of movement and constitute inhumane treatment.” The Commission is clear in its recommendation to phase out gestation crates, farrowing crates, tethering, forced feeding, tail docking, and body-altering procedures that cause pain. Read more.
The coalition challenging the New Jersey Department of Agriculture’s “humane” standards includes Farm Sanctuary, The Humane Society of the United States, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, The New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Animal Welfare Institute, Animal Welfare Advocacy, Save Our Resources Today, Center for Food Safety, and the Organic Consumers Association, among others. The organizations are represented by the public interest law firms Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal in Washington, D.C. and Egert & Trakinski in Hackensack, N.J.
