A representative from OEFFA asked me to take a look at the new Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board’s proposed standards for egg layers. I’ve finally gotten around to it, just a couple weeks before the meeting and a couple days before OEFFA wants my response.
Digging into it, I’m finding it difficult to be diplomatic. I had been going through the proposed standards line by line, inserting questions and proposed changes in almost every section to clean up the language and make it more specific where it seemed too vague and open to subjective interpretation. Basically, I was nitpicking their nitpicking. And then I got to a part where they deleted a line that would have required new caged-hen operations to give each bird 1.5 square feet. I was about to point out that without some sort of space requirement, they might as well not even address the issue of caged hens. Looking closer, though, I saw that they had. They require that caged hens each be given a minimum of 67 square inches.
I lost it. I had to step away from the computer to cool off for a while. When I came back, I prepared the statement I plan to give at the public comment portion of the meeting on the 21st. I’m finding it difficult to be at all diplomatic. I’m probably going to have to revise this a few times, as I’m given to understand that most of the people on the Board are big agribusiness types.
When the Farm Bureau and other such organizations campaigned for the creation of the Livestock Care Standards Board, they did so with the intent that it should protect conscientious farmers from being driven out of business by overzealous regulation.
It was with this intent that our state constitution was altered to establish this Board. And yet, a careful reading of the proposed standards for Poultry Layers shows that a strict interpretation of these standards as written will serve as a weapon to drive small producers out of the marketplace while protecting the interests of large agribusiness. Under the proposed standards, nearly every backyard chicken coop in the state will be criminalized, while big producers are given express permission to effectively stuff their hens into shoe boxes.
I have no hopes of improving the lives of chickens in caged housing operations. I recognize that the deck is stacked against anyone who’d wish to do so, and indeed, my own farm benefits from the presence of battery hen operations, as their practices–and the horror they inspire among consumers–create demand for free-range eggs from my own farm. So I’m not asking you to get tougher on caged housing operations. Instead, I ask only that you eliminate the double standard.
If you will allow big egg factories to stuff their chickens into cages less than eight-and-a-quarter inches
square, don’t leave me worrying over whether cleaning out my broiler pens once a week is sufficient to control parasites to your satisfaction.If you’ll grandfather in established producers to allow them to stack cages of hens on top of each other
so that the upper ones are defecating on the lower ones, don’t tell the small farmers of Ohio that we’re going to be penalized because chicken wire has sharp edges.If you’re going to tell the big producers they’re allowed to chop off their chickens’ beaks and combs, don’t tell us we’re being inhumane if we grab a running broiler by the legs on processing day. If you’re going to protect animal abuse on a massive scale, please don’t nitpick the handful of us who are trying to give our birds a better life, especially not in the name of humane standards.
It is in seeking an equal application of the law that I submit to you a line-by-line review of the proposed standards, with suggested changes and questions highlighting areas that require clarification. I hope that you will consider them as carefully as I have.
