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In France today, pork has become political. A series of conservative mayors have in recent months deliberately withdrawn the pork-free option from school lunch menus. Advocates of the policy claim to be the true defenders of laïcité, the French secular principle that demands neutrality towards religion in public space.

The post Secularism and sausages appeared first on OUPblog.

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By F. Bailey Norwood and Jayson L. Lusk

 
After fighting each other for over a decade, the egg industry and the largest animal advocacy organization came to an agreement, one which will increase the welfare of egg-laying hens but also increase egg prices.  The United Egg Producers, under persistent pressure from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), has agreed to transition hens out of battery cages and into enriched colony cages.  The HSUS certainly believes the higher welfare standards are worth the increase in egg prices, but do consumers agree?  My research says that when consumers are informed about the issue, yes, they applaud the move—even when they know higher egg prices will follow.

Most consumers do not wish to see farm animals crammed into small cages, but if they take the time to discover the source of their pork and eggs, these cramped animal cages are what they will see.  Chickens raised for egg production are placed in groups of 4-6 birds and raised their entire lives inside a cage so small that they cannot turn around without bumping into another chicken.  Spreading their wings is out of the question.  Sows (female hogs used for breeding) are confined even tighter, spending most of their lives in a stall so small the sow cannot even turn around.  There are more farm animal welfare issues than just space allotments.  Both layers and sows desire to forage for food, scratch or dig, socialize, and find comfortable places to rest.  All of these “behavioral” needs are neglected in the typical egg and pork production facility.  By transitioning from battery cages to enriched colony cages, the egg industry goes a long way towards meeting these space and behavioral needs.

Why are animal cages used in the first place, when the average person finds them disturbing?  In the competitive marketplace for food, farmers must employ confined production facilities to keep their costs low, because consumers generally emphasize low prices over animal welfare at the grocery store.  Yet, at the same time, consumers who purchase food from so-called “factory farms” donate money to the HSUS, who uses some of this money to ban the same animal cages used to produce most eggs and pork.  In surveys, referendums, and economic research, consumers consistently support the banning of the same cramped animal cages used to produce the food they purchase.

One reason the farm animal welfare debate cannot be quickly resolved is that consumers have difficulty resolving the issue for themselves.  They want livestock to be treated kindly, but they also want low food prices, and it is difficult to reconcile the tradeoff between animal well-being and food prices in the grocery store and/or in referendums.  For these reasons, the farm animal welfare debate is a messy, contradictory debate—the trademark of a democratic process.

Although consumer attitudes can be elusive to identify, research has revealed a few facts.  The most important fact to stem from consumer research is that, when consumers are informed about how layers and sows are raised, they consistently state they are willing to pay the higher food prices that would result from better animal care.  This does not imply that regular grocery store shoppers will reflect this level of concern in their willingness-to-pay for food, because the regular grocery store shopper is uninformed. 

However, the farm animal welfare debate is largely a policy debate.  Should we ban colony cages for layers?  Should we ban gestation stalls for sows?  It would seem prudent to base policy on the opinions of informed consumers, as opposed to uninformed consumers.  When employing this prudent procedure, there is little doubt that the ban on cramped animal cages occurring in the European Union and US states is justifi

Hello, all!

Today marks the three month anniversary of chris-whetzel.blogspot.com! Hooray! We're doing it! The goal is to keep this blog going strong for a whole year. I won't lie; its pretty tedious and often gets put on the back-burner, but its definitely keeping me working.

So whats new since the last post? Well, chris-whetzel.com is newly updated with two distinct portfolios. New images have been added to both portfolios as well as the News section being updated. The new Graphic vs. Linear division of artwork had paid off as it seems to help art directors. This became apparent after getting an email from the art director at SF Weekly where he requested a portrait in the "graphic style." Wonderful!

This portrait was to go with a music article on Dolly Parton who has started her own recording lable and will be performong in LA on the 5th. It was an interesting read, and the art director wanted me to specifically work from the excerpt "the biggest, brightest Dolly she can be." Sadly, since the commission was for an alt-weekly, the budget wasn't as high as I had hoped. But I really wanted to do a celebrity for the portfolio so I took the job after some negotiations. The lone sketch was approved:

So, yeah. A fun piece, a really easy-going art director, and a good addition to the portfolio. A three-pointer! *Swish!

The only bad thing was that this commission came through the day AFTER I had just sent my promo card files to the printer. Drat! This would have made a better one than my choice of the Crisis Magazine image a few posts back. Especially if I had colored it. Ah, well. Speaking of the cards, they just arrived. And I have to say: I am losing my patience with overnightprints.com. Many of the cards were off-center on multiple sides and text was right on the edge of a few even though I had stayed within the "safe area." Grrr. Its really frustrating and luckily I was able to trim some down and still use them. But really, its just more incentive to try the USPS print-and-mail service. Think thats gonna be the way I go for the Halloween mailer.

Another thing I'm considering for the future is using AdBase. We all know how awesome it is and I'm considering subscribing to that as opposed to the ispot. I can only do one right now, and I really can't decide. Decision, decisions. Hopefully, whichever I choose will fund the other. I think I'm going to wait for a bit as my list is freshly updated, and I should be fine for a spell. I want to see the response to this next mailer before I do anything. Don't want to spend money I don't have :)

And that's that. It promotion and drawing this week! Oh, and I'm still working in the spare time between jobs. Its a little harder with Aliyah being home all day, but I must be strong! That, and I'm just getting over a cold from last week so its been twice as hard to get cracking. Nonetheless, I managed to get out another "linear" piece for the site at the last week. Sorry I waited so long to post it:

I like it. The piece is for a community pork cook-off and fair, one of the options given to me to illustrate from Cleveland SCENE way back in May. Its nice to work in full-color as well as limited color. I think one makes the other better. And I think its a good subject to add to the portfolio as its not a typical theme.

All this with web updates, building a small site for my personal drawings, and re-building/updating Aliyah's site has kept me busy. It seems there is always something to do, even though there's nothing to do in this town :) Let's hope the mailer going out tomorrow brings in more work to occupy my time as well. Fingers are crossed!

Enjoy the Day and thanks for reading!
Chris

Publisher's Weekly reports that Siobahn Dowd, author of the wonderful first novel A Swift, Pure Cry has died in Oxford at age 47 of cancer. I'm saddened that this beautiful talent is gone.