There Ain't No Devil, It's Just God When He's Drunk

Okay, I suppose it's getting down to the wire back in the good ol' US of A for political candidates, measures, and propositions, and since it seems everyone has to comment in some way about the US political situation at the moment, I might as well follow. Bahhhh.

Rather than bleather about Obama vs John or Joe vs. Sarah, I'm gonna make a wee mention about something a bit closer to home. No, not Prop 8, the elimination of gay marriage, but the splash of cold water in the face that is Prop. 2.

Huh?

Yeah, I had no idea about ANY of the proposition until my ballot arrived two weeks ago...being removed from the country and from all the non-stop political propaganda ads meant that I could vote with a truely unbiased approach. So aided with nothing more than my sample ballot and my ol' trusty lappy interweb, I started filling it out. And then I came to Prop 2.

'Standards for Confining Farm Animals. Requires that certain farm animals be allowed, for the majority of every day, to fully extend their limbs or wings, lie down, stand up and turn around.'

Wait, Californians are voting on that? And that's when I knew I had been away for waaaay too long. You see, the UK has gone ape shit for free range. EVERYWHERE you go, all you see are free range chicken, free range beef, free range eggs, etc, etc, etc. They've had copious shows on the BBC hosted by big name Michelin chefs like Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay trying to educate the public about animal farming methods. It's now to the point that big supermarkets like Sainsburys has their own brand of chickens reared to RSPCA standards, and heck, its getting to the point that finding a non-free range butter is hard.

So having been immersed in a culture that now makes you feel like a shameful, bad person for not buying free range, it's become second nature to assume that all meats/dairy products are free range. Why wouldn't they be? Which is why Prop. 2 stuck me. We're voting to allow animals to stand up, turn around, and stretch their wings? Um, shouldn't they be doing that already? Oh wait- it's the US.

And then I remembered the Cow Fields. If anyone has the pleasure of driving for 12 hours from San Diego along the 5 interstate to San Francisco, they will inevitable pass the Cow Fields. Somewhere along hour 5 or 6, maybe an hour or so past the Grapevine, you enter a stretch that passes where our beef (or dairy, or something cow related) comes from. Miles of cows packed together on brown dirt under the blistering 108 heat with no shade and very little water just milling about and waiting. They say in the adverts that happy cows come from California, but these cows certainly don't look happy. I also remember the chickens, as seen in Fast Food Nation, and how many of them go crazy being tucked into shoe box sized cages until they die.

To me, having been in the UK for a while now and having seen free range practically take over the grocery stores, it seems like a given. But being away makes you realise that it's not. If you need to judge a country ( or state) on something, look at what gets put up to the vote, and how it does ( or does not) pass. I personally would much rather live in a state that not only brought the subject of free range up, but voted for it, than a state that continued to be ignorant to the welfare of the animals they eat.

However, we'll just have to wait and see if animals will legally be allowed to 'stand up and turn around.'