Farm Animal Cruelty Act

I have received hundreds of identical emails, mostly from people outside Massachusetts, urging me to support the Farm Animal Cruelty Act.

I am, in fact, a cosponsor of the act! I’m very aware of the gruesome facts pointed to in these emails about our factory farm system. That’s why I don’t eat much red meat or poultry.

I can’t reply to all of these emails but rest assured I support the bill.

The text of the identical emails follows:

I urge you to support the Massachusetts Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act to prevent the use of battery cages for egg-producing hens, veal crates for calves and gestation crates for female pigs and piglets.

Animals suffering these methods of confinement have been documented demonstrating unimaginable agony — even insanity. Pigs, for example, will bite the metal bars of their crates, ignoring pressure sores and bleeding from their mouths.

These confinement methods also cause pain and unsanitary conditions. Chickens often get their feet caught in the wire of their battery cages, and the cages stacked one on top of the other so that their excrement drops down onto the birds below.

And is their anything more tragic than a calf, taken from his mother almost immediately after birth, forced to live out his too-short life in a tiny box?

No being should be forced to live in extreme confinement, unable to turn around, spread their limbs or even comfortably lie down, as these animals do.

Seven U.S. states have already adopted similar laws. Please lessen the suffering of animals in your state and pass the Massachusetts Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act.

Sincerely,

[name deleted]
[street address deleted]
Topeka, KS 66604