When animal welfare isn't.

• Position: COMMENTARY

Byline: Bruce Friedrich

COLUMN: AS I SEE IT

As every middle school student in the country knows, the slogan of the Inner Party in George Orwell's "1984" is, "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Animal Abuse is Animal Care."

Okay, that last one isn't from the novel; sadly, it's from real life Massachusetts politics, where powerful agribusiness lobbyists are trying to subvert democracy and perpetuate a system of systematic cruelty to animals.

First some background: Over the past decade, citizens and legislators in nine states have passed laws to protect farm animals from the three most egregious confinement systems that exist on modern factory farms - battery cages, which confine five or more hens to cages about the size of a filing cabinet; and gestation and veal crates, which confine pregnant pigs and calves, respectively, in a space roughly the size of their bodies, so that they can't even turn around for almost their entire lives.

Americans are a compassionate people, with 95 percent saying that farm animals should be well cared for. Indeed, every time citizens have been able to vote on confinement systems, they've voted against them by overwhelming majorities, including in conservative states like Florida and Arizona, and this despite united opposition from Big Ag lobby powerhouses.

Massachusetts is considering two bills that are similar to the nine that have passed in other states: First, S.741, introduced by Sen. Robert L. Hedlund would ban gestation and veal crates. Second, H.1456, introduced by Rep. Jason Lewis, would go one step farther and also ban battery cages. In California, which banned all three systems in 2008 with a bill similar to H.1456, the initiative garnered more votes than any other ballot initiative in California history, despite more than $10 million spent by agricultural interests to defeat it.

Some in agriculture see the writing on the wall: They realize that these horrific systems, which deny animals their every natural desire and in which animals go insane from the stress and lack of mental stimulation, are destined for the dustbin of history. But some in animal agriculture are taking a page from George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," attempting to defend these cruel systems by going around the democratic process.

Enter Massachusetts' bill H.753, which would establish an 11-member "Livestock Board" designed to subvert democratically enacted farm animal protection legislation, including both bills currently under...