San Francisco, U.S.A. - The Humane Farming Association (HFA) and a coalition of animal protection organizations are applauding the Senate’s rejection of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s controversial “Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments of 2012″ (S. 3239) to the Farm Bill. Referred to by many as the Rotten Egg Bill , Feinstein’s measure is modeled on a similar bill (H.R. 3798) that was introduced by Rep. Kurt Schrader in the House earlier this year over the vehement objections of animal advocates nationwide.

“We applaud this Senate action which puts the rights and best interests of the American public ahead of the cynical political interests of the egg industry,” said Bradley Miller, National Director of the Humane Farming Association. “The egg industry is seeking to establish egg factory cages as a national standard that could never be challenged or changed by state law or public vote,” continued Miller.”Senator Feinstein’s amendments would preempt state laws, such as California’s Proposition 2, and is a direct assault upon egg laying hens’, voters’, and states’ rights.”

S. 3239 and H.R. 3798 would codify a controversial deal between the United Egg Producers (UEP) — the egg industry trade association recently sued for an alleged price-fixing scheme — and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which is now endorsing the same egg factory cages it had long opposed.

“The Rotten Egg Bill would be disastrous for laying hens who would be forever locked in cages — as well as for millions of voters whose rights would be traded away,” said Miller.

The Humane Farming Association had recently expanded its ad campaign to further expose UEP’s price-fixing scandal. UEP and several of the egg companies it represents have been sued repeatedly for alleged illegal price fixing, paying $25 million to settle allegations that they illegally manipulated the price and supply of eggs under the guise of instituting standards for animal welfare.

With active lawsuits pending against them from companies such as General Mills and Kraft Foods — UEP and its co-defendants are asking Congress to codify a set of standards that would, in effect, provide legal cover for the very activities of which they stand accused.

“Fortunately, very few Senators appear willing to jump in the middle of an ongoing price-fixing scandal just to placate an egg industry trade association and a co-opted humane organization,” said Miller.

“According to the bill’s own sponsor, this was introduced to protect the economic interests of the egg industry,” said Miller.”The American public overwhelmingly supports the banning of egg factory cages, not measures such as this which would ban the outlawing of cages.  Such moves clearly subvert the will of the people.”

“There is no such thing as an ‘enriched’ battery cage. This is an outrageous attempt by the egg industry and its cohorts to enrich themselves at the expense of laying hens and the public at large,” said Priscilla Feral, President of Friends of Animals.

“The cages defined by the legislation will in no meaningful way reduce the unimaginable suffering endured by the hens,” said Nedim C. Buyukmihci, V.M.D., Professor Emeritus of Veterinary Medicine at U.C. Davis. (Read full statement here.)

“Even if this measure passes, the majority of hens will remain entombed in battery cages on factory farms,” said Karen Davis, Ph.D., President of United Poultry Concerns. “They will be locked into a federal law administered by the USDA which does not even enforce the 54-year-old ‘Humane Slaughter Act.’”

In addition to the Humane Farming Association, opponents of S. 3239 and H.R. 3798 include Friends of Animals, United Poultry Concerns, Last Chance for Animals, Action for Animals, Northwest Animal Rights Network, Defend Animals Coalition, Political Animals, Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Food Animals, Sunnyskies Bird and Animal Sanctuary, SAFE, Humane Farming Action Fund, Animals Unlimited, Massachusetts Animal Rights Coalition, Chicken Run Rescue, Associated Humane Societies, and the vast majority of rank-and-file animal advocates.

All of these organizations urge those who support real progress in animal welfare to contact their federal representatives to voice opposition to these bills.

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Friends of Animals recently celebrated a victory for scimitar-horned oryx, addax, and dama gazelles who are routinely bred and killed on hunting ranches here in the United States. These animals, on the brink of extinction in their native homelands in northern Africa, have been the targets of paying trophy hunters seeking a thrill-kill.

On 5 Jan. 2012, a new rule in the U.S. Federal Register was published, reflecting two decades of work by Friends of Animals to protect these antelope. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) will now protect all members of these three species under the Endangered Species Act—including those bred on U.S. soil and sold for sport-hunting.

60 Minutes will recount the story of how these animals ended up on the verge of extinction, and how Friends of Animals, through its project in Senegal, is protecting these animals so they can recover their footing and freedom in their own habitat.

“We’re grateful that 60 Minutes is telling this landmark story,” says Friends of Animals’ president Priscilla Feral, who worked with 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan in the late spring of 2011—recounting Friends of Animals’ work on this project that began in 1999 with a trip to Senegal.

Friends of Animals, with the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, sued the federal government to list the these antelopes as “endangered” under U.S. law. In September 2005, the FWS did list the three species as “endangered,” noting that desertification, human encroachment, ranching, regional military activity, and hunting imperil these antelopes.

Yet on the same date, the FWS published an exception to the rule removing take and transport prohibitions from the very animals that the United States has the strongest power to protect—those kept by U.S. enterprises.  The blanket exemption authorized killing, commercial transport, and interstate or foreign commerce—hence, allowing continued exploitation of these animals on hunting ranches.

A court case brought by Friends of Animals and WildEarth Guardians in 2009 challenged the loophole and secured a court order finding that the exemption violated Section 10 of the Endangered Species Act. The judge call the blanket exemption “anathema” to the ESA, and in June 2009 remanded the rule to the FWS for the appropriate change.

Friends of Animals currently supports an increasing population of 175 oryxes (and dozens of dama gazelles) in northern Senegal within two, semi-desert reserves encompassing thousands of acres—and is committed to seeing these numbers grow.

“Even though this project is decades long, we’re just beginning,” says Feral. “We’re committed to ensuring these animals thrive in freedom once again.”

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