In the 1990s, Oprah Winfrey was sued by the beef industry after airing a program that discussed concerns about mad cow disease. She hadn’t seriously revisited issues related to animal agriculture until last week when she devoted her entire show to a discussion of Proposition 2 in California.

Concerns about the cruel treatment of animals on factory farms are reaching mainstream audiences like never before, and millions of citizens are seeing images of industrial animal confinement for the first time. Lisa Ling, the correspondent who worked on the Oprah program wrote about her experience:

“Never having ever visited farms from which eggs and pork products are produced, I visited a couple standard ones and I can't say that I'll ever think the same way… When I visited the caged egg and pig farms, I was shocked by how efficient, mechanical and computerized everything was. They were literally churning out product at rapid-fire pace...animal product. I must say that it was hugely eye-opening to see 90 thousand hens under one roof. There were 6 to a tiny cage, all on top of each other, fed antibiotics--covered in feces. It wasn't exactly, the wide-open space farm that I envisioned… Anyone who says that it is anything other than the wholesale factorization of living things is fooling themselves….”

Agribusiness is trying to convince consumers that it is healthy and humane to confine animals in cages and crates so tightly that they cannot turn around or stretch their limbs, but their arguments ring hollow. Their crowded, manure laden farms breed disease, and when citizens see how the animals are treated, they are appalled. This November, Californians will have an opportunity to end intolerable suffering and to assert a basic humane principle by voting Yes on Prop 2.