Voters shouldn’t be fooled by Issue 2, which would amend the Ohio state constitution to create a Livestock Board with unchecked power over farm animal regulations (“State ballot issues will have big impact,” Oct. 15).

While masquerading as an attempt to improve food safety and animal welfare, Issue 2 would give 13 political appointees the authority to thwart even modest reform.

Agribusiness is behind this crass power grab so that it can continue inhumane practices on factory farms: keeping hens crammed into cages so tightly they can’t even spread their wings, confining breeding pigs in tiny barren crates and immobilizing calves by chaining them inside veal crates.

We wouldn’t force our pets to live in such filthy, cramped cages for their whole lives, and we shouldn’t force farm animals to either.

All animals, including those raised for food, deserve humane treatment.

The proposal is opposed by a broad range of groups, businesses, and individuals, including the Ohio Farmers Union, the Ohio Environmental Stewardship Alliance, the League of Women Voters of Ohio, the Ohio Sierra Club, the Center for Food Safety, Family Farm Defenders, The Humane Society of the United States, the Capital Area Humane Society, the Geauga Humane Society, the Cleveland Animal Protective League, the Toledo Area Humane Society, the Columbus Dispatch, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Dayton Daily News.

Stop the power grab. Vote NO on Issue 2.

For more information, visit humanesociety.org or OhioAct.org.

Dean Vickers

Ohio State Director

The Humane Society of

the United States