Yes On Question 3 To Prevent Animal Cruelty

So as to prevent animal cruelty and improve consumer health and safety, I strongly urge voting Yes on Question 3 on November 8.

The simple truth is that various farm animals live out their lives confined in clearly inhumane ways. Days or hours after birth, calves raised for veal are often chained by the neck to live in crates too narrow to turn around in or lie down comfortably. Female pigs are confined for years in crates so small that they have no way to turn around and can take no more than one step forward or backward. Likewise, egg-laying hens are crammed together into cages so tiny that there is no room to even spread their wings.

The lifelong suffering these animals endure is frankly difficult to grasp. Moreover, there are practical adverse impacts to consumers as well. The nonprofit Center for Food Safety confirms a much higher rate of food pathogens, including serious contaminants such as salmonella, in cage-confined hens.

We have the power on November 8 to not only end unacceptable animal cruelty, but also to promote heightened consumer safety. Voting Yes on Question 3 will prevent various farm animals from being crammed into confinements which preclude them from even extending their limbs, and will also ensure that suppliers of food to Massachusetts likewise comply with these very basic standards.

A vote of Yes on Question 3 makes sense at every level of human decency and consumer safety.

Andrew de Blank, Pickerel Way, Forestdale