WHAT IT WOULD DO: Starting in 2015, make keeping animals in areas where they cannot turn around, lie down, stand up or extend their limbs illegal.

At first glance, Proposition 2 doesn’t even seem open for discussion; who wouldn’t want to protect animals from cruel confinement on large factory farms? But upon closer inspection, Californians must realize that if passed it will do more harm than good for state agribusiness.

Proposition 2 would add a chapter to the state’s Health and Safety Code to ban the housing of animals in a manner that does not allow them free range of movement, focusing on three types of caging: veal crates, sow gestation crates and battery cages for chickens.

Although the relatively small pork and veal industries could adapt — as they have Colorado, Arizona, Oregon and Florida, which have passed similar measures regulating those sectors — to the changes, it’s California’s $337-million egg industry that would be cracked wide open if the measure is successful because the market would adjust to the expensive restrictions by simply importing eggs from neighboring states and Mexico, which still use battery-cage systems, inevitably leading to the industry’s virtual collapse.

Cruelty to animals is abhorrent, and the parts of the measure regulating sow and veal confinement are worthy, but Californians would be irresponsible to pass the measure as written because of the drastic economic pitfall it will bring to the egg industry at a time when the economy is more fragile than ever. Vote no on Proposition 2.