Opinion: The real chicken run

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It’s easy for California voters to love Proposition 2, the initiative to let laying hens out of their battery cages. And I don’t mean that as a compliment.

It’s easy because Prop. 2 doesn’t cost the consumer a dime. Nobody has to buy cage-free eggs. All the initiative does is force California egg farmers to raise them that way. (Remember that despite the wording, this initiative isn’t about veal calves or pregnant pigs, because California has hardly any of those. This is all about chickens.) No wonder Prop. 2 is acing the political polls.

Surprise! Californians buy a lot of their eggs from out-of-state egg farms. And since food prices have not been kind to anyone’s wallets lately, and a lot more people don’t have spare cash these days, consumers can be expected to go for the cheaper eggs. Not just in California, but nationwide, putting California’s egg farms at a perpetual disadvantage. So nothing changes about the way eggs are produced, but a whole lot of eggs --and California egg farmers--can’t find a big enough market.

If Californians were serious about humane treatment of chickens, they would put their money where their frittata-munching mouths are. What if this initiative required that eggs sold in California cannot come from battery-cage hens. Voters would, in effect, be taxing themselves and each other, paying for the kind treatment they support. This wouldn’t just put the state’s egg farms on an even laying field (sorry, couldn’t resist), it would have an impact across the nation. California is a huge market for everything, from cars to textbooks. What California demands is what the nation tends to produce.

So why isn’t this initiative written that way? There’s the conspiracy theory that the Humane Society types behind the initiative actually want egg farms to go out of business, the better to promote veganism. That sounds a little grassy-knollish to me. But it is worth remembering that this campaign originates with a national organization, not a state one, and the survival of a California industry is not toward the top of the Humane Society’s priority list. Probably proponents figured this would be more palatable to the voters, but it’s a chicken way to reform agriculture.

Photos by Manjunath Kiran, European Pressphoto Agency, and Mark Boster, Los Angeles Times