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New Jerseyans are overwhelmingly in favor of banning gestation crates and raising pigs humanely, as they do here at a farm in Hillsborough.
(Saed Hindash/Star-Ledger)
There’s a bill awaiting the Governor’s signature that essentially abolishes the torture of pigs, which should be about as controversial as the Microwave Poodle Ban of 1968 and the historic Kitten Skeet-Shooting Prohibition Act.
But Gov. Chris Christie — a political animal even on porcine particulars — must be waiting to see how it polls first.
This is not a joke. The Governor, who probably doesn’t choose a breakfast meat nowadays without testing it before a Des Moines focus group, vetoed the last bill that protects pigs from horrendous conditions, including the immobilization of females inside gestation crates for what are essentially their entire, perpetually-pregnant lives.
It is inhumane treatment, that is beyond debate: The Assembly reiterated this last week, when it overwhelmingly agreed to send another pig protection bill (53-13, with 19 brave abstentions) to the governor's desk.
The problem is that Christie vetoed a similar measure last year – after it flew through the Senate (29-4) and Assembly (60-5) – because he saw Iowa farmers on the horizon, pitchforks in hand, like a menacing army of anti-pork vigilantes.
Never mind that 91 percent of the people in his own state wanted to ban gestation crates. If you're Chris Christie, you don't cross pig farmers in a caucus state.
So succumbing to the pressure of pork people, he vetoed the last bill in Jan. 2013, citing the opinion of two veterinary groups whose studies aren't as advanced as others; and because common sense was in rare supply 20 months ago.
The righteous movement to keep sows in a two-foot-wide metal crate — which doesn’t even permit them to turn around, prevailed.
In September, however, there was a Mason-Dixon poll of Iowa voters that asked whether they'd have a different impression of Candidate Christie if he were to sign such bill. The result is that 37 percent said they'd look upon him more favorably. Hardly anyone (two percent) would hold it against him.
Perhaps inspired by "additional evidence," the governor recently acknowledged that the treatment of pigs is an issue worth looking at again. What a relief it must be to learn that it is also politically expedient.