Los Angeles Times
USDA sued over farm animal rights ballot measure
-- Tony Barboza
11:27 AM, August 15, 2008
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2008/08/usda-egg-board.html Backers of a farm animal rights measure on California's November
ballot have sued agriculture officials, saying they illegally approved
$3 million in spending by an egg board to defeat the measure.
The federal lawsuit, filed Wednesday by Californians for Humane Farms,
says the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the $3 million in
spending by the federally supervised American Egg Board, an egg
producers' trade group, despite a law prohibiting the board from using
funds to influence government policy.
The measure, Proposition 2 on the Nov. 4 ballot, takes aim at
so-called "factory farms" and would be the most comprehensive farm
animal rights law in the country, its supporters say. The law would
ban cramped metal cages for egg-laying hens, metal gestation crates
for pregnant sows and veal crates for lambs — industry standards that
confine animals so that they can barely move.
But a recent UC Davis study said that if the measure passes, the
state's $330-million egg industry will be so heavily restricted it
would face "almost complete annihilation."