Farm Sanctuary Scores Landmark Legal Victory for Farm Animals!

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Farm Sanctuary Scores Landmark Legal Victory for Farm Animals

Yesterday, Farm Sanctuary scored a precedent-setting victory in its

decade-long battle against the New Jersey Department of Agriculture's

(NJDA) inhumane standards of farm animal care

http://action.farmsanctuary.org/site/R?i=6Wayqolz0_wYaZcQdA7u_Q.. ).

In a monumental legal decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court

unanimously declared that factory farming practices cannot be

considered "humane" simply because they are "routine husbandry

practices." The Court also rejected the practice of tail-docking cattle,

the manner in which the NJDA had provided for farm animals to be

mutilated without anesthesia, and ordered the agency to readdress

many of the state-mandated standards for the treatment of farm animals.

The NJDA had set its spurious standards of humane farm animal care

after the state legislature ordered it to develop humane care

standards in 1996. In a disingenuous and duplicitous move, the NJDA

responded nearly eight years later by qualifying all factory farming

practices as "humane," simply because they are routine in the

industry.

In response, Farm Sanctuary launched a coalition and filed a lawsuit

against the NJDA, stating that the NJDA's sanctioning of factory

farming practices as humane failed to follow the legislature's

directive. The lawsuit reached the state Supreme Court, which

yesterday handed down its decision.

This decision does not stand without criticism. The Court failed to

take the opportunity to strike down regulations that allow the

confinement of breeding pigs in gestation crates, and calves in veal

crates, as well as the transport of sick and downed cattle. Although

the Court admitted that confinement practices were "controversial"

and

that downed animals "suffer greatly," it refused to intervene in the

agency's decision to permit these systems, suggesting that these

issues should be addressed to the legislature. In fact, there is

growing momentum nationwide, and in other countries, to phase out

these cruel systems, and we will push the agency vigorously to phase

out these cruel and inhumane practices when the regulations are

revised.

The Court's decision will have far-reaching repercussions for farm

animals across the entire country. Historically, perhaps the greatest

legal obstacles preventing the application of cruelty statues to farm

animals are state exemptions based on "routine husbandry practices."

Now that Farm Sanctuary has persuaded New Jersey's highest court to

reject such a consideration as sufficient grounds for declaring any

practice to be humane, we have created a new and deep crack in the

industry's legal dam.

Read more about this landmark victory, and thank you for your ongoing

support in our efforts to end factory farming:

http://action.farmsanctuary.org/site/R?i=dbFe6v4OZeP13_YtiZes8w..

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