(Beth Clifton collage)
Animal issues are more in focus down-ballot in California & Colorado than in the U.S. national election, despite the anti-animal history of the previous Trump administration and the longtime pro-animal history of Kamala Harris
SONOMA COUNTY, California; DENVER & AURORA, Colorado––Down-ballot measures coming before local voters in California and Colorado on November 5, 2024 may tell more about evolving American attitudes toward animals than any choice among candidates or even the outcome of Proposition 127, the Cats Aren’t Trophies initiative to ban puma and bobcat hunting in Colorado.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Bogus claim that “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats” fizzles as election issue
Republican candidates Donald Trump and J.D. Vance continue to try to center the U.S. presidential race on a thoroughly refuted allegation that Haitian immigrants are eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio.
(See “Run Spot Run” from Trump/Vance bogus claims about dog & cat eating and Did Trump & Vance mean pit bulls are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio?)
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris meanwhile brings to her candidacy by far the strongest record on animal issues of any presidential nominee ever.
(See VP Kamala Harris has long, strong record on animal issues.)
But polling indicates that neither the fate of Springfield dogs and cats, per se, nor any other animal issue ranks high among voter concerns in 2024.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Cats Aren’t Trophies” likely to pass in Colorado
Colorado Proposition 127, meanwhile, follows a multitude of other ballot initiatives in multiple states passed to protect apex predators over the past 32 years, including those that protected bears from hounding and mandated reintroduction of wolves in 1992 and 2020.
Much as trophy hunters and ranchers hate the idea, the public has consistently favored apex predators at the ballot box, except in Maine in 2014.
There an initiative seeking to ban hounding and leghold trapping bears failed by 51,000 votes in a non-national election year with relatively low turnout.
Residents of Sonoma County, California, and Denver and Aurora, Colorado, will be voting on November 5, 2024 on four topics rarely put before voters: factory farming, slaughterhouses, fur garment sales, and pit bulls.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Sonoma County Measure J challenges factory farmers
Among the four campaigns, Measure J to prohibit concentrated animal feeding operations, as federally defined, from operating in Sonoma County appears to be the most sweeping, most unique, and to have generated the most opposition.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO for short, as a farm where:
- More than 1,000 animal units are confined for more than 45 days in a year.
- Animals do not have access to grass or other vegetation during the normal growing season.
- An animal unit is the equivalent of 1,000 pounds of “live” animal weight.
Sonoma County has 24 known concentrated animal feeding operations, which among them confine a total of nearly three million animals, mostly chickens.
Turkey vultures near Bodega, Sonoma County, California. (Beth Clifton photo)
Factory farmers hide behind history
According to the Yes on Measure J website, “This includes factory egg farms, like a Sunrise facility in Petaluma that confines around half a million chickens in massive industrial sheds. It also includes chicken farms that supply Perdue, one of the largest meat producers in the country, and a handful of large dairy farms with an average of over 1,000 cows.
“These factory farms hide behind Sonoma County’s reputation for small-scale and sustainable agriculture, but they are poisoning the environment, hoarding the limited water supply, spreading disease, and confining animals in deplorable conditions.”
The Sonoma County economy was historically dominated by industries helping to feed the San Francisco Bay area, from poultry barns in the south to sheep folds in the hills, a substantial fishing fleet in Bodega Bay, orchards around Healdsburg, Gravenstein, Freestone, and Sebastopol, whose names are shared with fruit varieties, and dairy farms thriving in the valleys, including the renowned Valley of the Moon where the author Jack London in 1915 tried unsuccessfully to introduce an early version of factory-style automated pig farming.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Vineyards & winemaking replace animal husbandry
The post-World War II advent of synthetic alternatives to wool brought the collapse of the sheep industry nationwide, but in Sonoma County winegrowers from the southern end of the San Francisco Bay area, displaced by urban development in the Santa Clara Valley, soon bought and converted most of the former sheep farms into vineyards.
Winemaking came to be the most characteristic form of agribusiness in Sonoma County, even as the mid-1960s arrival of four-lane highways facilitated the transition of much of the county into bedroom communities for commuters.
Agriculture today employs only about 2% of the 500,000 Sonoma County residents, but continues to have a strong influence on Sonoma County politics.
Wayne Hsiung.
(Direct Action Everywhere photo)
“An astounding act of political corruption”
Charged Direct Action Everywhere founder Wayne Hsiung on July 14, 2024 in his Simple Heart blog, “The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, in an astounding act of political corruption, unconstitutionally modified the Measure J ballot initiative in an effort to undermine support. The board voted to remove the words, ‘to promote animal welfare, water quality, and other goals’ from [the wording of] Measure J [as it will appear on the November 5, 2024 ballot.]
“That leaves voters with no sense of why Measure J is so important.”
Resolutions urging defeat of Measure J have been passed by the city councils of Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Sonoma, and Windsor, leaving Cotati as the only incorporated city in the Sonoma Country with no official position on Measure J.
Wayne Hsiung arrest by Sonoma County Sheriff’s office at Sunrise Farms protest.
(Facebook and Instagram screenshot from video)
60% of speakers oppose Measure J
In Sebastopol, reported Amie Windsor for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, “Slightly more than 60% of speakers who packed the council chambers to express their opinions before the 3-2 vote [against Measure J] opposed the measure, with the rest saying it should be approved to ensure humane treatment of chickens, cows and other farm animals.
“Measure J was brought to the county ballot by the Coalition to End Factory Farming,” Windsor wrote, “a group of animal rights supporters, environmentalists and small farmers.”
(Beth Clifton photo)
Can voters close the biggest lamb slaughterhouse in the U.S.?
The Colorado ballot measure topics include two––fur sales and pit bulls––with limited history in other jurisdictions, plus one, closing the Superior Farms slaughterhouse in Denver, with apparently no precedent in recent times.
Explained University of Colorado environmental studies Ph.D. candidate Dayton Martindale on September 8, 2024, in an op-ed for Westword, “Citizen-initiated [proposed] Ordinance 309 would shut down the massive slaughterhouse on the South Platte River, banning future slaughterhouses here as well.
“Like many such facilities,” Martindale charged, the Superior Farms lamb slaughterhouse, the largest in the U.S., “ignores environmental regulations, violating the Clean Water Act for years.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Opposed across the political spectrum
“Environmental Protection Agency inspectors have also alleged Clean Air Act violations,” Martindale continued.
“This one facility slaughters 300,000 lambs a year — a number with the cumulative carbon impact of driving around the Earth 27,000 times. That’s what we’re trying to shut down.”
Ordinance 309 would appear to have a slim chance of passage, opposed by conservatives, libertarians, and most nominally liberal factions in Denver politics, including the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Denver, the Colorado Working Families Party, and labor unions, among them the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, the Service Employees International Union, the Denver Area Labor Federation, Denver Pipefitters Local #208, and the Teamsters Union.
Only Pro-Animal Future, the organization that petitioned to put Ordinance 309 on the ballot, appears to favor it; but it did get enough petition signatures to be considered.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Humane Society of U.S. backs anti-fur initiative
The Humane Society of the U.S. is backing Denver proposed Ordinance 308, described by HSUS president Kitty Block on September 23, 2024 as “a citizen-initiated ballot measure that would end the sale of new fur products in Denver.”
According to the Yes on 308 website, “Ordinance 308 is focused strictly on removing Denver’s support of the cruel fur trade, where animals are primarily killed for fashion. As such, it includes exemptions for taxidermy, used fur products, and those used for tribal, cultural, or spiritual purposes by a member of a Native American tribe.
“The proposed ordinance,” the Yes on 308 website explains, “does not apply to leather products or other common livestock fiber products like cowhides, sheep and alpaca wool, and mohair.
“It also does not apply to fur pelts that have not yet been manufactured into consumer products, meaning hunters and trappers can still sell pelts they have obtained through their legal activities.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Precedents in California & elsewhere in Colorado
As the Humane Society of the U.S. web page on Ordinance 308 details, “Sixteen municipalities and the entire state of California have passed similar prohibitions on the sale of new fur products. This includes Boulder, Colorado, which passed a fur sales ban in 2021.”
The argument most resonant with the Denver voting public may be that, as the Yes on 308 website states, “Fur factory farms are a biosecurity threat to the public and wildlife. For example, mink on hundreds of fur factory farms across Europe and North America, including in the U.S., have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Research shows that farmed mink can spread the mutated virus to humans, especially in fur factory farm conditions.
“Now, the highly pathogenetic strain of avian flu (H5N1) has been detected in mink, foxes and raccoon dogs, leading to serious concerns for potential transmission to humans. Diseases from fur farms also threaten wildlife, with escaped animals infecting wild populations near fur farms.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Pit bull ban again up for vote in Aurora
Pit bull bans have been passed by more than 900 U.S. communities over the years, later rescinded by several dozen, and superseded in 22 states by legislation stripping cities and counties of the right to enact breed-specific ordinances.
Only four times in the 21st century, however, have pit bull bans come before voters. Two of those four instances have been in Aurora, Colorado.
The Aurora city council approved a pit bull ban in 2005.
Pit bull advocates, after nine years of litigation and activism against the ban, won a public vote on it in November 2014. The ban was ratified by 64%.
(See Losing in Aurora, pit bull advocates set their dogs on us, Blue Buffalo, & Home 4 the Holidays.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Long local history
The Aurora City Council in January 2021 voted 7-3 to rescind the pit bull ban, but Aurora resident Matthew Snider in May 2021 filed a lawsuit against the city council decision, arguing that a vote of the people could only be overturned by a vote of the people.
Snider won the case before the Colorado Court of Appeals, leading to the pit bull ban going before Aurora voters on November 5, 2024 for the second time.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Miami-Dade, Springfield (Missouri), & Denver
A pit bull ban in effect in Miami-Dade County, Florida, was upheld by 63% of the voters on August 14, 2012.
The Miami-Dade County pit bull ban, however, went largely unenforced from then until it was superseded and overturned by Florida House Bill 941 in 2023.
Non-enforcement of the Miami-Dade County pit bull ban contributed to four pit bull fatalities in the county between 2012 and 2023.
A fifth Miami-Dade pit bull fatality followed just 78 days after the ban fell.
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
Out-spending voices for animal and human safety by a margin perhaps as high as $10,000 to $1.00 in each instance, pit bull advocates in August 2018 defeated an ordinance that would have prohibited bringing new pit bulls into Springfield, Missouri, and in November 2020 won repeal of a pit bull ban in effect in Denver, Colorado since 1989, by a margin of 65% to 35%.
Denver adjoins Aurora.
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The post Factory farming, lamb slaughter, fur sales, & pit bulls on 2024 ballots appeared first on Animals 24-7.