2008 California Proposition 2

Proposition 2 was a California ballot proposition in that state's general election on November 4, 2008. It passed with 63% of the vote in favor and 37% against, enacting the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act and submitting it to the Secretary of State. The initiative's name (as with others such as Proposition 8) was amended to be officially known as the Standards for Confining Farm Animals initiative. The official title of the statute enacted by the proposition is the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act.

The proposition adds a chapter to Division 20 of the California Health and Safety Code to prohibit the confinement of certain farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs. The measure addresses three types of confinement: veal crates, battery cages, and sow gestation crates.

Having been passed by the voters on November 4, 2008, the key portion of the statute became operative on January 1, 2015. Farming operations had until that date to implement the new space requirements for their animals, and the statute now prohibits animals in California from being confined in a proscribed manner.

Few veal and pig factory farm operations exist in California, so Proposition 2 mostly affects farmers who raise California's 15 million egg-laying hens.

In 2010 the California legislature passed AB 1437, which required shell eggs sold in the state to meet the same requirements. Both Proposition 2 and AB 1437 went into effect in 2015. In 2018, a new ballot measure, Proposition 12, closed loopholes in these laws by requiring the same standards for all eggs and pork sold in the state, regardless of the form in which it was sold (i.e. both shell eggs and liquid eggs), and the state in which it was produced. Proposition 12 was implemented on January 1, 2022, but was temporarily blocked by a judge following legal challenges brought by representatives of the pork industry. In 2023, in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld Proposition 12.