First, is the announcement in The Wall Street Journal that Smithfield, the nation’s largest producer of pig meat, will phase out the gestation crate by 2017. Britain banned the gestation crate in 1999.
Gestation crates are an excellent example of the self-imposed problems of factory farming. What do you do when you have thousands and thousands of breeding sows who you want to keep in the smallest, cheapest and easiest amount of confined space? You dream up gestation crates. They are 2 feet wide metal crates with bars. Sows spend most of their lives in gestation crates. Once a sow no longer makes sufficient money in breeding piglets she is slaughtered and people eat her. Sows suffer from sores on their bodies from constantly rubbing against the crates. They’re denied straw bedding and stand on uncomfortable slatted or grated floors allowing urine and feces to fall through.
The second piece of good news is that Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke out today in support of gay adoptions. This critically important comment occurs in the context of a debate surrounding the British government and the implementation of its Equality Act, which will make it illegal to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Leaders in the Roman Catholic Church called on the British government to exempt them from the act so that Catholic adoption agencies could legally discriminate against gay adoptions. So, not only can British gays and lesbians enter into a legally-recognized civil partnership (marriage in all but name) it is increasingly likely that they will be able to legally adopt children. Meanwhile U.S. federal law and some state law deny the rights of gays and lesbian to equality both in marriage and adoption.
