The plan for a cage-free California is still incubating. But animal welfare activists have some good news in the meantime: A new egg bill was signed into law on July 6.
The bill, A.B. 1437, seems to be an annotation of Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act that passed with a precedent-breaking 64 percent vote in 2008. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) introduced the bill to the Assembly on February 27, 2009.
Prop 2 phases out the state’s production of eggs from hens in cages. (Though it effectively implies cage-free conditions, it doesn’t explicitly enforce them. Farmers can augment their crates in such a way that satisfies the law, or they can go entirely cage-free — as long as the hens are able to stand up, turn around, and spread their wings without touching another hen or sides of an enclosure.)
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