Last-Minute Legislative Goes Against Original Animal Welfare Law

A last-minute legislative deal was made to rewrite some of the key points in a voter-approved animal welfare law. The law was set to make sure that meat animals and laying hens were given humane living quarters.

It would ensure that animals such as pigs will have ample room to live comfortably in, giving them the ability to lay down, turn around, and move as they please. It would also mandate that laying hens have a single square foot of floor space per bird, and encourage keeping them cageless. This would allow them to move about as they please and have a better quality of life.

The last-minute changes were done to ease shortage fears as people were alarmed that the new requirements would reduce the amount of meat and eggs being sold.

This setback has animal activists and conservationists upset. Bradley Miller, executive director of the Humane Farming Association, called the legislation, “a devastating setback to farm animal protection and a major betrayal of Massachusetts voters.”

The changes for how pigs are kept will experience a 7-month delay, keeping pigs locked up in inhumanely small pens.

Miller said, “This so-called compromise of delaying the enactment for seven and a half months — that’s a farce. That will be changed once the Legislature comes back in session. You can count on the pork industry seeking to push that date back even further.”

Many animal welfare groups and activists strongly believe that these delays are just giving these industries time to work their way around the new animal welfare law as the rewrites do not provide the humane measures that voters wanted.

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• November: Animal Law Updates that Improved the World for Animals this Month

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