BIG-AG BUSTERS: California and Colorado ballot measures are terrifying the meat industry
The anti-factory farming movement has a long way to go in convincing people to see industrial animal agriculture the way they do fossil fuels. But should even one of the ballot measures succeed, political leaders might be persuaded that their constituents care enough about farm animal issues. Win or lose, animal advocates will still face the wearying task of trying to bridge the public’s cognitive dissonance about where our meat comes from and channel it productively into politics.
MARINA BOLOTNIKOVA: Most people know Sonoma County, the Northern California region sometimes called America’s Provence, for its lush vineyards, Mediterranean-style villas, and farm-to-table restaurants. But… there is a side of Sonoma few outsiders know about… Run by a subsidiary of the poultry giant Perdue, which raises hundreds of thousands of chickens on factory farms across Sonoma, the slaughter plant typifies the unusual politics of agriculture in this part of the country, where a cultivated image of gentle, humane farming sometimes sits uneasily alongside an increasingly consolidated agriculture sector. The county has also seen a recent influx of new residents fleeing rising housing prices in San Francisco, a longtime center of animal rights activism and utopian thought.
The region’s rural heritage and progressive politics will collide next month when Sonoma County residents vote on a first-of-its-kind ballot measure that could banish Perdue’s chicken facilities, along with all other large factory farms. The proposed law — which would cap the size of animal agriculture facilities and phase out all large factory farms in the county within three years — faces long odds. If successful, it could reshape the face of farming in the county and set a precedent that has terrified agricultural interests in California and across the country.
Known as Measure J, the proposal has produced fierce debate in the county over the environmental, public health, and animal welfare impacts of modern animal agriculture. It’s poised to generate the highest campaign spending of any ballot measure in Sonoma County history, with about $2 million in contributions made for and against — the vast majority of which has been spent by industry in opposition.
Measure J is one of a pair of local ballot initiatives this fall seeking to abolish industrial animal agriculture. In Denver, a historic center for the Western livestock trade and still an important hub for the US sheep industry, voters will decide next month whether to ban slaughterhouses in the city. The measure’s passage would shut down a lamb slaughter plant that butchers up to 500,000 lambs per year, accounting for between 15 and 20 percent of all US lamb meat.
Both measures face opposition from their respective political elites, including the local Democratic Parties in Denver and Sonoma and the entire Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. While some prior farm animal welfare ballot measures — like California’s historic 2018 animal welfare law, Proposition 12 — have been more limited in scope, aiming to incrementally improve horrific factory farm conditions, the Sonoma County and Denver measures are more clearly perceived as bans…
Measure J, advanced by a coalition of animal rights, environmental, and public health groups known as the Coalition to End Factory Farming, would require farms classified by the US Environmental Protection Agency as large “concentrated animal feeding operations” (known as CAFOs) to either downsize or shut down within three years…
In Denver, meanwhile, the proposed slaughterhouse ban, led by the advocacy group Pro-Animal Future, looms like a “black cloud” over the US sheep industry, as one sheep feedlot employee put it. Over the last 50 years, American lamb farming has declined precipitously; the Denver slaughterhouse that would be shut down by the ballot measure, run by top lamb producer Superior Farms, is one of relatively few important facilities remaining.
If the measure passes, it’s possible that some producers will be able to send their animals to be slaughtered elsewhere or that a new slaughterhouse will open outside Denver limits. Or… the measure could hasten the death of the lamb industry altogether. Not many investors are saying, “Gee, I think I’ll go into the lamb slaughtering business,” he said. “Mostly they look for something that’s growing, and nobody thinks the lamb business is growing.”
Pro-Animal Future, much like the coalition campaigning for Measure J in Sonoma County, sees the ballot initiative as a means to start civic conversations about building a more humane, planet-friendly food system, without making people feel like the only option available to them for making change is to go vegan…
The anti-factory farming movement has a long way to go in convincing the people of Sonoma County and Denver to see industrial animal agriculture the way they do fossil fuels. And without meaningful change in either the underlying demand for meat and dairy, or in nationwide regulation of CAFOs, isolated local initiatives are, for now, likely to only shift production elsewhere.
But should even one of the ballot measures succeed next month, political leaders might be persuaded that their constituents care enough about farm animal issues to create momentum for further reform. Win or lose, though, animal advocates will still face the wearying task of trying to bridge the public’s cognitive dissonance about where our meat comes from and channel it productively into politics. SOURCE…
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