Outlawed in Europe

How America is Falling Behind Europe in Farm Animal Welfare

Animal Rights International

Preface to the 2010 Edition

Sadly, seven years after its publication, the book Outlawed in Europe remains relevant.  In the preface to the original edition, Peter Singer, President of Animal Rights International, wrote of his surprise at the lack of knowledge about animal welfare in farm practices demonstrated by the United States Department of Agriculture staff during a May 2002 meeting.

At that time, Professor Singer encouraged USDA staff to explore factory farming reforms taking place in Europe in the hope that such practices could be adopted in the United States.

In the late eighties, ARI founder Henry Spira helped to introduce the horrors of factory farming to the American public. ARI’s 1989 campaign against Perdue Farms' treatment of broiler chickens, factory workers and the environment resulted in enormous publicity, including a feature article in The New York Times Magazine. Another ARI campaign targeted the shackling and hoisting of large animals during slaughter. This horrific practice involved hoisting animals weighing several hundred pounds by a shackle attached to a hind leg.  In the three years following that campaign, major slaughter facilities were persuaded to install upright restrainer technology, which effectively phased out shackling and hoisting in the US. 

With these campaigns Henry Spira and ARI launched a revolution of compassion.  Today millions of consumers make compassionate food choices daily that help alleviate the suffering of the billions of animals inside factory farms.  The cruelty and danger of factory farming has become a regular topic in today’s mass media and popular culture with Americans devouring books on the issue like Eric Schlosser's groundbreaking, Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan’s, The Omnivore's Dilemma and Jonathan Safran Foer’s, Eating Animals.

As the public becomes increasingly concerned about the problems synonymous with factory farming, positive changes have started to happen.  However, the acceleration of industrialized farming in still developing countries promises increased suffering for billions of animals globally, as well as increased danger to humans and the planet.  The United Nations estimates that a billion additional consumers will be eating meat factory farmed in developing countries in the coming decades. Yet very few of these countries are properly prepared to respond to an outbreak of an animal-borne disease such avian influenza. 

As awareness of the problems inherent in factory farming has increased, there have been some efforts by governments and industry to make the housing and slaughter process more humane.  Though legislative progress has been slow, several victories have been achieved, and recently the pace appears to be picking up.  The most noteworthy was the passing of California’s ballot Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act in November 2008.  This measure prohibits the confinement of certain farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs. It addresses three separate types of confinement: veal crates, battery cages, and sow gestation crates.  Having received a landslide 63.5% of the votes on November 4, 2008, the key portion of the statute will become operative on January 1, 2015.  All farms have until this date to meet the new space requirements for animals.

Other laws passed in the United States and Europe since the initial publication of Outlawed in Europe include:

  • In November 2002, Florida voters passed Amendment 10, an amendment to the Florida Constitution which bans the confinement of pregnant pigs in gestation crates.
  • In November 2006, Arizona voters passed Proposition 2004 prohibiting the confinement of calves in veal crates and breeding sows in gestation crates.
  • In June 2007 Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signed a measure into law prohibiting the confinement of pigs in gestation crates.
  • In May 2008, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter signed into law a bill, SB 201, effectively phasing out both veal and gestation crates.
  • In May 2009 Maine Governor John Baldacci signed legislation that, effective January 1, 2011, will prohibit gestation crates for pigs and veal crates.
  • In October 2009, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm signed into law a bill that phases out veal crates for calves within three years, and battery cages for laying hens and gestation crates for breeding sows within ten years.

In Europe, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria have all banned battery cages, and these bans are either already in effect or will be very shortly.  In addition all members of the European Union have agreed to phase out battery cages by the year 2012.  The EU is enacting further regulation to maximum stocking densities for meat chickens by the end of 2010.

Finally, in January 2007, in a move that certainly would have pleased the late Henry Spira, corporate giant Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the U.S., announced that it will phase out gestation crates by 2017.  Gestation crates are also on their way out in the EU, where beginning in 2013, the crates will be forbidden past the fourth week of pregnancy.

Outlawed in Europe provides the reader with detailed descriptions of how animals are mistreated inside America’s factory farms.  The book also illustrates that in our treatment of farm animals we in the U.S. lag behind the 27 nations of the European Union. Here’s hoping that continuing changes allow the United States to “catch up” on this issue, and not only begin to exhibit some compassion and reverence toward farm animals, but also to protect the environment and save human lives by lessening outbreaks of animal-borne illnesses related to reckless factory farming practices.  Animal Rights International hopes that by passing legislation that protects farm animals and by making compassionate choices as consumers, Americans will not only ensure that Outlawed in Europe is soon outdated, but also bring one of the saddest chapters in this nation’s history, factory farming, to an end.

Kelly Overton and Peter Singer
December 2009


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