“Ques­tion 3,” endorsed by the Humane Soci­ety of the Unit­ed States (HSUS), the Humane League, Mer­cy for Ani­mals and a bevy of oth­er ani­mal wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions, would pre­vent the sale and pro­duc­tion of pork, veal and eggs com­ing from farms where ​“ani­mals are con­fined in a cru­el man­ner,” where ​“cru­el” is defined as ​“prevent[ing] a[n] ani­mal from lying down, stand­ing up, ful­ly extend­ing the animal’s limbs or turn­ing around freely.”

Next Tues­day, sand­wiched between bal­lot mea­sures on char­ter schools and mar­i­jua­na, Mass­a­chu­setts vot­ers will decide whether or not to pass one of the more pro­gres­sive ani­mal wel­fare mea­sures in the country.

Polls sug­gest it will pass eas­i­ly, and sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion in Cal­i­for­nia — Prop 2, which food writer Mark Bittman called ​“the most sig­nif­i­cant ani­mal wel­fare law in recent his­to­ry” — passed with near­ly two-thirds of the vote in 2008. Indeed, it’s not just veg­ans who care about our sen­tient cousins: Accord­ing to a 2015 Gallup poll, 94 per­cent of Amer­i­cans say non­hu­man ani­mals deserve at least ​“some pro­tec­tion from harm and exploitation.”

But while I’d still vote yes on Ques­tion 3, and have noth­ing but respect for the hard work and good inten­tions of the activists behind it, its def­i­n­i­tion of ​“cru­el” sets such a low bar that the main suf­fer­ing it’s like­ly to alle­vi­ate is that of the eater’s con­science. The idea of an ani­mal liv­ing a hap­py and healthy life end­ing in a swift, pain­less death — as opposed to the cramped, unsan­i­tary hell­holes of too many farms — is for the most part just that: an idea, and one with lit­tle rela­tion to what’s in your supermarket.

Despite cheer­lead­ing from even osten­si­bly anti-meat groups, the wel­fare gains promised by Prop 2, cage-free ini­tia­tives and oth­er reforms are large­ly smoke-and-mir­rors. The good will of the pub­lic — at least those who can afford to shop at Whole Foods or fork over extra cash for cage-free eggs — is being exploit­ed finan­cial­ly with lit­tle to no actu­al improve­ment in ani­mal well­be­ing. Advo­ca­cy groups like PETA and Direct Action Every­where (DxE) are now sug­gest­ing that the whole so-called humane indus­try is a sham.

The reforms so eager­ly cham­pi­oned — HSUS put mil­lions of dol­lars into its Prop 2 cam­paign, and sup­port­ers of Ques­tion 3 have raised over $1 mil­lion — are not work­ing. And they’ll nev­er work unless we move towards a more plant-based food system.

The myth of ani­mal welfare

FOIA requests filed by DxE found no record of enforce­ment action on Prop 2, despite sev­er­al Cal­i­for­nia egg farms still not meet­ing the new­ly man­dat­ed space require­ments. (Some of them still don’t meet the old require­ments.) At a ​“humane cer­ti­fied” egg farm that sup­plies Cost­co, Trad­er Joe’s and Safe­way, mem­bers of the group filmed wide­spread sick­ness, injury, death and overcrowding.

One com­pre­hen­sive study showed that cage-free egg oper­a­tions — to which many com­pa­nies are mov­ing, in part due to pres­sure from HSUS and oth­er ani­mal advo­cates — have high­er mor­tal­i­ty rates than the caged ones they’re replac­ing, due to crowd­ed, filthy con­di­tions that con­tribute to can­ni­bal­ism and poor air qual­i­ty. Some ani­mal rights groups main­tain cage-free eggs are still bet­ter than the alter­na­tive; I’ve been infor­mal­ly involved with groups on both sides of the divide, but as I can­not direct­ly ask a hen which they pre­fer, I’ll remain agnos­tic. But ​“cage-free” clear­ly doesn’t meet the cru­el­ty-free stan­dards many con­sumers have in mind.

Cor­po­ra­tions like Whole Foods (WF) aggres­sive­ly adver­tise their strict ​“humane” stan­dards and sell ​“com­pas­sion­ate” prod­ucts for which con­sumers eager­ly pay more. In 2005 PETA, HSUS and oth­er ani­mal advo­cates signed a let­ter of appre­ci­a­tion for WF’s rig­or­ous wel­fare poli­cies. Even the veg­ans were impressed!

But the honeymoon’s over: Recent inves­ti­ga­tions into pig, turkey and egg farms show that WF’s stan­dards don’t look as humane in prac­tice as they do on paper. PETA, for exam­ple, found pigs packed tight­ly into con­crete sheds, in vio­la­tion of WF pol­i­cy. Sev­er­al had ​“grotesque rec­tal pro­laps­es” or oth­er untreat­ed ail­ments. PETA sued the com­pa­ny for con­sumer fraud, and this year PETA, DxE and oth­er advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions wrote a new let­ter ask­ing WF to end its ​“fraud­u­lent ​‘ani­mal wel­fare’ mar­ket­ing and [its] finan­cial sup­port for vio­lence against animals.”

Inso­far as some wel­fare stan­dards exist, we should at least call for bet­ter enforce­ment of what’s already on the books. But for the most part, such cam­paigns spend con­sid­er­able time and ener­gy on cost­ly, logis­ti­cal­ly dif­fi­cult tran­si­tions to what are at best slight improve­ments on the sta­tus quo and, arguably, sim­ply a dif­fer­ent form of tor­ture. If you out­law one form of abuse, food cor­po­ra­tions — fueled by the need to make a prof­it — will come up with another.

Plus, after all these fail­ures, it’s tough to get excit­ed about a slight­ly big­ger cage. Such minor reforms do noth­ing to address the more quo­tid­i­an injus­tices of life on the farm: the one-day-old calf sep­a­rat­ed from his moth­er so we can take all her milk; the piglet cas­trat­ed with no pain relief; the chick­en so fat from gen­er­a­tions of selec­tive breed­ing she can’t sup­port her own weight. Con­tem­po­rary ani­mal agri­cul­ture does not need tin­ker­ing at the mar­gins — it is rot­ten to the core.

The way forward

A key prob­lem under­gird­ing this whole fias­co is the sheer quan­ti­ty of ani­mal prod­ucts con­sumed by indus­tri­al­ized nations, espe­cial­ly the Unit­ed States, which envi­ron­men­tal­ists, pub­lic health advo­cates and ani­mal pro­tec­tion­ists all rec­og­nize needs to decrease. There is sim­ply not enough space to give all 9 bil­lion land ani­mals slaugh­tered year­ly in the Unit­ed States room to wan­der open pas­tures — already today, about 30 per­cent of Earth’s non-ice land sur­face goes toward sup­port­ing live­stock, the major­i­ty of agri­cul­tur­al land. Ani­mals devour resources while their waste pol­lutes water and air; abuse of human work­ers is ram­pant; the indus­try con­tributes more to glob­al warm­ing than the entire trans­porta­tion sec­tor; marine ecosys­tems floun­der after decades of over­fish­ing. Meat con­sump­tion has also been linked to heart dis­ease and sev­er­al cancers.

Mod­er­ate wel­fare reforms don’t address the live­stock over­pop­u­la­tion prob­lem—if any­thing, they make peo­ple feel bet­ter about eat­ing meat — and as such are doomed to fail.

A shared goal between both con­sci­en­tious omni­vores and ani­mal lib­er­a­tionists might be to lim­it over­all meat, egg and dairy con­sump­tion. This could be approached not just on the lev­el of the indi­vid­ual con­sumer, but through pol­i­cy shifts at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment — from increas­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty of plant foods in poor neigh­bor­hoods to fix­ing our bonkers agri­cul­tur­al sub­sidy sys­tem, which favors large-scale indus­tri­al mono­cul­tures and fac­to­ry farms.

This is a polit­i­cal issue, and should be treat­ed as such: Cam­paign to shut down a local fac­to­ry farm; coor­di­nate a veg­an break­fast pro­gram in your school dis­trict; con­tact your rep­re­sen­ta­tive; pick­et a Whole Foods. We can expect Big Ag to fight us every step of the way, so we should also sup­port broad­er strug­gles to trans­form the econ­o­my and rein in cor­po­rate power.

Togeth­er we can bring about a world with afford­able, acces­si­ble and nutri­tious plant food, where ani­mal prod­ucts are rel­a­tive­ly rare and each farmer has time and space to care for their non­hu­man inhab­i­tants. That’s still not the world many advo­cates want, and I’ll keep fight­ing with them until the last slaugh­ter­house clos­es. I hope, by then, I’ll have con­vinced you to join me. But you don’t have to be a veg­an to rec­og­nize, eth­i­cal meat is a mirage — and that won’t change until we start eat­ing more plants.