Animal Activists Attack Consumer Choice
In Los Angeles, it may soon be illegal to buy everything from rabbit keychains to conventionally raised pork chops. Following years of pressure from animal rights activists, the city council voted last week to move forward with a ban on the sale and manufacture of fur products. Not to be outdone, animal activists are also running a ballot measure in California that would ban the sale of commonly produced pork in grocery stores across the entire state.
Animal rights activists are aggressively lobbying for state and local laws to raise the cost of production of a wide array of consumer products, with the ultimate goal of banning them entirely. Congress needs to pass the Protect Interstate Commerce Act to defend the personal choices of Americans.
Americans support protections for animals, and it’s important that wherever animals are kept — in a zoo, in a medical research facility, in a home — their welfare is preserved.
But animal rights activists, such as PETA and the Humane Society of the United States, want something entirely different. They believe that using animals for food, clothing, or exhibition, is morally wrong. To them, animal use is animal “abuse.”
Their quasi-religious zealotry even extends to pet ownership. The head of PETA has argued: “If [people] want companionship, they should seek it with their own kind.” (Or, perhaps, a pet rock.)
Animal rights activists are, of course, free to persuade others to join their vegan lifestyle that eschews all animal products. But they haven’t been very successful. Only around 1 percent of Americans say they adhere to a vegan diet. Meanwhile, Gallup finds that 57 percent of Americans think wearing fur is morally acceptable — nearly unchanged since 2001.
So the animal rights movement has instead lobbied in politically friendly jurisdictions to raise the cost of consumer products that come from animals or, where feasible, to ban them outright.
These laws can have wide-ranging effects. For instance, a California law that took effect in 2015 banned the sale of commonly produced eggs from the state. Predictably, California consumers were left with higher prices (18 percent higher, per a Cornell analysis) and fewer choices at the supermarket. But that’s not all.
Farmers in other states that sell to California had to spend millions of dollars becoming “California-compliant” or else lose a huge market. The expensive changes California demanded were arbitrary and not backed by animal welfare science. And costs to farmers have in turn spread to consumers who don’t live in California.
Unfortunately, with so many Americans removed from agriculture, it’s easy for animal rights campaigners to trick people into voting for state ballot measures by showing them imagery of abused farm animals. Farmers and ranchers treat their animals humanely and work closely with veterinarians, but multi-million-dollar ad campaigns with sad chickens drown out this reality.
That’s why the Protect Interstate Commerce Act is needed. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-IA), would prevent states and localities from enacting arbitrary bans on agricultural products such as farmed fur or meat. It is currently under consideration as an amendment to the 2018 Farm Bill.
The idea is simple: If a farmer in Missouri raises hens in accordance with his local, state, and federal regulations, then California can’t ban him from selling eggs to Golden State consumers.
At stake is fundamental consumer choice for Americans. Animal rights activists don’t believe Americans have the right to choose to eat meat or wear wool. In the words of a longtime PETA executive, “[Eating meat] is not your personal decision, any more than, you know, whether somebody beats their child is their personal decision.”
The vast majority of Americans would beg to differ. Consumers should be free to choose to live an animal-free lifestyle. They should also be free to choose otherwise.
Most people don’t wear fur coats. But when you consider how much of the economy involves animals — wool, cashmere, silk, meat, eggs, dairy, pets, zoos, aquariums, etc. — then it becomes clear the attack on fur by Los Angeles is an attack on everyone’s freedom to choose.
Will Coggin is the research director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting personal responsibility and protecting consumer choices.
