The Ohioans for Humane Farms Ballot Initiative Campaign: What I'd Do Differently

At the Vegetarian Summerfest and Animal Rights Conferences which I attended there was a lot of discussion of the question of whether animal rights activists like myself should be working for improvements in how animals raised for food are treated rather than encouraging people to reduce or eliminate their consumption of animal foods. I discussed this question with other vegans at both conferences and came to think differently about my participation in the recent effort lead by the Humane Society of the US and others as the coalition "Ohioans for Humane Farms" to get an initiative on the ballot in Ohio to give animals enough space to stand up, turn around and spread their wings and be euthanized humanely and to prevent animals too sick or injured to walk from entering the food supply. Enough signatures were collected to get the initiative on the ballot and a deal has been struck to get legislation passed that would do most of what the ballot initiative would have done if it passed as well as much more for other animals.

I do believe that it is preferable that an animal raised for food suffer less rather than more. Having thought about this campaign more, I think I still would have collected some signatures, but would have just emailed people that I know in the Dayton area to let them know that I had a petition that they could sign, and maybe I would have sent a letter to the editor about it. The message in that email and letter would have extended far beyond any that Ohioans for Humane Farms would recommend however.

I don't believe that my participation in this campaign or that of any vegan was necessary for it's success. There were many volunteers who were not even vegetarian. HSUS also had the means to pay people to gather signatures and could have paid many more. This seems to be a much better use of their money than the exorbitant salaries and wasteful direct mail fund raising campaigns that they spend it on now. It's also money raised largely from people who are not vegetarian or vegan. This is the most "radical" campaign that those people are likely to support. As a vegan, if I had the opportunity to work on such a campaign again, I would let those donors pay for signature gatherers while I worked on promoting veganism and debunking the myth that an animal can be humanely raised and slaughtered for food. While there are some organizations like VegFund that will pay you to hand out vegan food and literature and even reimburse you for paying people to watch short movies that show the cruelty of raising and slaughtering animals for food and advocate veganism, they don't have anywhere near the resources that HSUS does.

I regret wearing a button that said I was a volunteer for "Ohioans for Humane Farms" because I think the only humane farms are those that don't send their animals to slaughter or otherwise kill them when they are "spent" from laying so many eggs or producing so much milk. I also regret not using the petition as a starting point for a conversation with my non-vegan friends here in Ohio about why I thought signing the petition was important, but literally the least they could do and why they shouldn't feel too good about it. In such a conversation (or email) I would have talked about how these changes won't go into effect for a long time and about the practices this initiative wouldn't stop, such as mutilations (i.e. searing beaks of chicks, "docking" piglets' tails) of farmed animals to keep them from hurting each other in crowded conditions that are likely to continue after the cages and gestation crates are gone. I'd have explained how animals are bred to grow so large, so quickly that they live in constant pain and often die prematurely. I'd have pointed out that cows grieve when they're babies are taken away from them, that all animals raised for food are killed when they are very young and they all protest being slaughtered violently when they are not ambushed. I'd have pointed out that the industry could invent other, possibly even crueler practices to circumvent whatever law is passed to because their sole concern is profit and the animals they exploit for this are merely units of production to them. I'd add that the increased space requirements for animals would mean more wild habitats would be destroyed to make room for them. Finally, I would have reminded them that vegan meals can be mighty tasty and taste a lot like the foods they enjoy and that they have the opportunity to eat vegan food at least three times a day and save lives, the environment and possibly their health in the process.

I would have been discouraged from saying any of these things by HSUS staff though.