NJ Seeks Public Comments on its Agri-Business Friendly Humane Standards

June 26, 2003


	Anonymous for Animal Rights, Israel

Perhaps the people will be heard the second time around. New Jersey agriculture officials are soliciting public comments on the state's newly released standards for the "humane" treatment of farm animals—agri-business-friendly standards that were more than seven years in the making and apparently drafted against the will of the people.

Despite receiving thousands of comments from the public condemning factory farming practices and asking agriculture officials to make New Jersey a model state for farm animal welfare, the department of agriculture proposed standards that embrace corporate ag methods that many deem inherently inhumane. State agricultural officials were mandated by the legislature in 1996 to adopt "standards for the humane raising, keeping, care, treatment, marketing, and sale of domestic livestock." Seven years later, those standards, according to many in the animal welfare field, fall far short of legal expectations.

In the proposed rules for the "Humane Treatment of Domestic Livestock," agriculture officials would appear to be juggling contradictory positions. In the summary of the new rules, ag officials write, "Protecting the health and well-being of New Jersey’s livestock is a concern to all compassionate individuals who want to ensure farm animals are humanely treated." Then, two paragraphs later, they write, "These standards are not intended to modify those routine animal agriculture practices that are performed each day by farmers in New Jersey, but rather to protect animals from only those practices that are inhumane or cruel."

Those "routine animal agriculture practices" that New Jersey apparently endorses include forced molting, veal crates, gestation crates, and tail docking—practices that can not be considered humane according to scientific evidence, ethical considerations, and public concern.

On June 20, 2003, Dr. Michael Appleby, vice president of the Farm Animals and Sustainable Agriculture Section, was one of many concerned citizens and animal advocates who spoke at a public hearing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Appleby testified that "the document [the draft standards] puts it well: It defines 'humane' as 'marked by compassion, sympathy and consideration of the welfare of animals'." Yet, he noted, the very same document allows many practices banned in Europe on the advice of the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare:

Keeping sows and veal calves in crates too small for them to turn around
Keeping laying hens in crowded, wire battery cages
Subjecting hens to forced molting by starving them for up to two weeks
Tail docking dairy cows
Transporting and marketing of unfit and non-ambulatory animals

Appleby was not the only one to speak for the animals. Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, talked about the vast amount of European research that had been done on the issue of farm animal welfare. The Europeans are leading the way, he said, in terms of improving the welfare of animals through legislation.

Despite the generally negative feelings toward the proposed rules, Appleby noted that if New Jersey would draft standards that actually fulfilled the legislative mandate, the state could lead the rest of the country toward a humane, sustainable future for agriculture. The HSUS currently supports producers who actually farm humanely, such as organic producers and producers who follow the standards established by Humane Farm Animal Care and/or the Animal Welfare Institute.

The New Jersey Department of Agriculture is now accepting public comments on its proposed rules on the "Humane Treatment of Domestic Livestock." It is critical for officials to hear from concerned citizens by July 4, 2003. Tell agriculture officials that the proposed standards fall short of the requirements and that factory farming practices are inherently cruel and therefore counter to the legislative mandate.

Please write today:

Dr. Nancy Halpern Director
Division of Animal Health
New Jersey Department of Agriculture
P.O. Box 330
Trenton, NJ 08625-0330
or e-mail: humane.standards@ag.state.nj.us

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