Your future hamburgers are breathing easier these days.
Last year, the Humane Society of the United States gathered more than half a million signatures to put three animal-friendly issues on the Ohio ballot.
To avoid a contentious and costly campaign, then-Governor Ted Strickland brokered an agreement between the Humane Society and its opponents at the Ohio Farm Bureau. The deal called for phasing out confinement cages, cracking down on inhumane euthanasia, and regulation of sick animals entering the food supply.
But friends of cows grew fearful all over again last month when the Ohio State Livestock Care Standards Board, the group charged with pushing through the regulations, narrowly voted to continue confining veal calves.
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2011.
