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New livestock rules sow debate on animal rights

Activists see cruelty, farmers, a living

BY ALEXANDER LANE
Star-Ledger Staff

With the state on the verge of setting standards for the treatment of farm animals, a furious debate is under way between farmers and animal-rights activists determined to curb what they call cruel farming practices.

So far, the farmers are winning. The proposed rules, which would be the first set of comprehensive livestock standards in the nation, largely endorse business as usual, allowing farmers the full range of modern techniques for getting the most out of animals as quickly as possible.

"They are abysmal," said Gene Bauston, president of the animal-rights group Farm Sanctuary. "There is no way you could call them humane."

Farmers would be free to deprive hens of food and water for 14 days, shocking their system into another egg-laying cycle. Sows could be housed in crates so narrow the animals would not be able to turn around. Veal calves could be tethered by their necks and denied solid food so that their flesh turns out tender and pale.

Farmers and their advocates say those practices, cruel though they may sound, have been proved to produce healthy animals quickly. They caution against letting human emotion cloud the debate.

"I'd wish I wasn't tethered all the time. But you know what, I'm a person, that's why I'd wish that," said Larry Katz, chair of the Department of Animal Science at Cook College and a farm industry adviser. "You have to try to view the world as the animal does and not expect the animal to perceive the world as a human does."

Agriculture officials drafted the standards in response to a 1996 law directing them to do so. The state Legislature passed that law after farmers complained that local animal control officers were making up their own standards of cruelty and giving farmers cruelty citations for routine practices.

Other states govern animal farming with more narrow, species-based rules or under animal cruelty statutes, as New Jersey currently does, officials said.

"We're the first state in the nation, to our knowledge, to develop something as thorough as this," said Secretary of Agriculture Charles Kuperus.

The standards, as drafted, would do little to change operations on the 2,833 farms in New Jersey that make most of their money from livestock. The department is taking public comments until July 4, however, and Kuperus said the rule could be re-drafted based on the comments.

Many of the issues are largely symbolic. Industry experts said they did not know of any New Jersey farmers who raise veal, keep sows in small gestation crates or withhold food from hens, though such practices are common elsewhere in the country.

But animal-rights activists had hoped New Jersey would become a model, showcasing rules that set limits on "factory farming," the increasingly common, ultra-efficient style of farming on a massive scale.

"Factory farming treats animals like a product, not a living being," said Tee Carlson, president of the Hunterdon County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "Most farm animals are raised for food, but I think the least we can do is provide these animals with a humane life. They need room to walk, they need proper food, they need a humane death."

Factory farms have fine-tuned techniques of turning animals into meat as quickly and inexpensively as possible, leading critics to accuse them of overcrowding and otherwise mistreating livestock. New Jersey has few factory farms, giving the state the potential to set high standards and cater to the growing segment of the marketplace that prefers nonfactory farmed food, Bauston said.

"New Jersey is positioned to really be a leader in this area," Bauston said. "They're already a large part of the way there."

Executives from one of the state's large farms -- the International Standards of Excellence Corp. farm in Warren County, which has over a million chickens and is owned by a Japanese company -- did not return calls for comment.

But Katz and other farm advocates outlined the rationales for factory farming practices. Gestation crates, the individual pens for breeding sows, protect piglets from being crushed by their mothers and prevent the sows from injuring each other in fights, Katz said. Forced molting -- the withholding of food and water from hens to spark a new egg-laying cycle -- is temporary stress, not starvation. Veal crates, confining though they may be, protect calves from disease, he said.

Another area of controversy is the slaughtering of "downers," animals, usually cows, that are too emaciated or injured to walk. The standards would allow such animals to be hauled to market. Activists have complained that such a practice is not only cruel, but potentially unhealthy, because it is dangerous to eat emaciated animals.

Hope Gruzlovic, spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture, countered that veterinarians are posted at slaughterhouses to make sure downed animals are not dangerously sick.

Even as the debate over the standards rages, the state Legislature is considering a law that would mandate the humane treatment of veal calves, defining that in a way that would sharply restrict veal farmers. The roles are reversed in that debate, with animal-rights activists cheering the bill -- which has been passed by the Senate and is being considered by the Assembly -- and farmers opposing it.

"We don't think the Legislature should be getting involved in setting professional management standards for any industry, including agriculture," said Peter Furey, executive director of the New Jersey Farm Bureau. "This is an ill-advised and inappropriate intrusion into how we farm."

Katz cautioned that in both debates, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture.

"The American public enjoys the healthiest, safest, cheapest food supply in the world," Katz said. "That has been the fuel for so many of our other economic advances, which have allowed us the luxury of starting to think about what is humane."