A little-known law could upend the dairy industry
And it turns out that one of the most foundational, most disturbing practices found in modern dairy farming may already be illegal under a California animal cruelty law — but state officials have shown little inclination to look into it.
Key points
- The case that could transform how dairy calves are treated Advancing Law for Animals just filed suit on behalf of the Caru Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a California animal protection nonprofit seeking a court ruling that the calf crates violate state law.
- Such facilities, often known as “calf ranches” or “calf nurseries,” have become increasingly central to the US dairy business — as we wrote earlier this year, they “raise calves on dairy farms’ behalf during the fragile infant stage in which they’re too young to bring in any….
- If the case succeeds, it could create a blueprint for similar challenges statewide, and even spark a broader reckoning within America’s dairy industry.
But California has never enforced that law against calf crates in the state’s powerful dairy industry, where millions of newborn calves have been kept in extreme confinement (nor, apparently, has the law been enforced against any factory farm).
Additional details
- The state has a plain-English law, Section 597t of its criminal code, that mandates that confined animals be provided an “adequate exercise area.” Though it doesn’t define what constitutes such an area, Shakib and other farm animal advocates argue that it strains credulity to believe the minuscule, barren crates provide one.
- At any given time, 9 to 10 million dairy cows populate farms across the US, and California is home to 1.7 million of them, the vast majority of whom are raised on mega dairies.
- They’re leading a lawsuit against Hettinga Dairy, a Southern California farm that has kept thousands of calves in individual crates, alleging that it’s violating Section 597t.
- But the state leads the US in agricultural output, and it is, by a wide margin, America’s top producer of dairy, one of the most brutal sectors in our food system.
- Confining calves in this manner is not dissimilar to the use of gestation crates in the pork industry — tiny metal enclosures where pigs barely have room to move.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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