By JOSHUA EMERSON SMITH
C J Brantley, sales representative for JS West Milling Company, Modesto, visited Merced High school Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012 morning and talked about business model, which highlights the relationship between state regulation and private industry. JS West vocally suppported state regualtions that increased cage space for chickens.
In the parking lot of Merced High School, about 25 students gather around a metal cage filled with rubber chickens. The teenagers — some wide-eyed, others sporting glazed looks — listen as C.J. Brantley, spokesman for poultry giant JS West Milling Co., describes the cage.
“This is a scaled-down model of our commercial barn,” he tells the teens. “As you can see, there’s plenty of space to move. They can move around. They can move in every direction.”
The presentation is part of an agriculture earth science class curriculum in which students study perspectives both critical and supportive of industrial agriculture. What’s at stake for the students is a letter grade. What’s at stake for JS West is millions of dollars. In an effort to satisfy California law, the company is retrofitting the cage systems in three of its barns.
“It’s hard to spend $3 million to remodel our barns,” Brantley said, addressing the class. “And what this has done is it has cut down on one-third of our birds. So now we have to produce one-third fewer eggs. You’re talking 300,000 (fewer) eggs a day. You’re talking a dollar a dozen. It’s a lot of money every day.”
By 2015, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, a law passed by California voters in 2008, will go into effect regulating chicken cages in the state. Among other things, the law requires a chicken to be able to spread its wings, flap its arms without touching another hen, lay its eggs in private and exhibit all natural behaviors of being outside.
It’s not clear if JS West has gone far enough with the design of its new cages. The company is taking a “significant risk,” Brantley said. “We believe wholeheartedly that this is a very good way to fill in that void between the proposition and reality. We feel that this abides by everything the proposition has asked for.”
The presentation convinced at least one student. Colten Alva, 16, said at first he was skeptical, but after seeing the demonstration, he said he thinks the new cages will comply with state law.
“You really have to see both sides of the story to understand what they’re doing,” he said. “People are standing up for better food and better environments for the animals. What our ag departments are doing is creating a safer environment for all the animals.”
However, whether the new JS West cage system meets state guidelines may be a “moot point,” said Peter Brant, spokesman for the Humane Society of the United States, which helped spearhead the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act in California. Now the organization is backing federal legislation that would preempt the state law. Brant said that while the federal standards wouldn’t be as strict as California’s, on balance they would be worth passing to avoid state-by-state fights over poultry regulations.
“This was a compromise bill,” Brant said. “It sets in place a schedule for phasing in requirements over the course of the next 15 years.”
The bill is expected to be introduced in the next few weeks by Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader from Oregon.
For Brantley and JS West, the issue goes beyond laws and regulations. It’s about building wider public acceptance for industrial agriculture. Toward that end, the company has posted a live video feed of its chickens in the new cage system on its website, jswest.com.
“Our goal now is to recreate the industry and be leaders on this new frontier,” Brantley said. “We want everyone to understand what we’re doing, why we’re doing it. It’s going to start with the younger people. It’s going to start with the people who are still forming their opinions. We don’t want big agriculture to be a bad name anymore. We want big agriculture to be looked up to.”
Reporter Joshua Emerson Smith can be reached at (209) 385-2486 or jsmith@mercedsunstar.com.