Taking the Initiative BY LEE PITTS

Taking the Initiative

by Lee Pitts

As Californians are about to find out, there are repercussions for being gullible and ignorant.

On January 1st residents of the golden state may wonder why there are no bacon and eggs in the grocery store. We’re betting they won’t even realize that this is not some

COVID-bottleneck. No, this will be 100 percent their fault.

PROPOSITIONING YOU

One of the reasons that California has gone off the rails so dramatically is that it’s relatively easy to get a proposition on the ballot for residents to then vote on. In this case we’re talking about Proposition 12, otherwise known as the Farm Animal

Confinement Proposition. Back in 2018 Prop 12 was passed with two thirds of California’s voters overwhelmingly supporting it. The

Proposition increased the minimum confinement area allowed for sows, egg-laying hens and veal calves: sows must be given at least 24-square-feet of space in their farrowing crates, veal calves a minimum of 43-squarefeet, and egg-laying hens must be cage-free by 2022.

Four years ago the year 2022 probably seemed like a long way away, and in the meantime voters on the left-coast patted themselves on the back for being caring souls who equated the sows, hens and veal calves with the dog that sleeps in their bed and eats off their table. Now it’s almost 2022 when the Proposition they passed will go into effect.

Here’s the bad news for Californians who like bacon and eggs. Besides giving farm animals more room, Prop 12 bans the sale of products from ANY farm, dairy or ranch that fails to meet those new standards no matter where in the United States they are.

Currently California is a substantial net importer of eggs, producing six percent of the national total of table eggs and consuming 12 percent. It wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time California exported eggs to other states but due to increasing regulations egg production there has declined substantially since 1971.

The situation with pork is even more dire. Only 4 percent of hog operations in the entire country would be in compliance with the new California regulations but Californians consume about 15 percent of all the pork produced nationwide. California currently produces 45 million pounds of pork per month while they consume 225 million pounds monthly.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Proposition 12 after several lawsuits by the National Pork Producers, Farm Bureau and others. The North American Meat Institute, the national organization for packers, filed its lawsuit in October 2019 and argued that the Proposition violated the Constitution’s Commerce Clause because it essentially imposes restrictions on ranchers and farmers across the United States. The Commerce Clause supposedly protects free trade among the states.

Needless to say, animal rights groups were positively giddy about the court’s decision. Animal Legal Defense Fund’s Executive Director Stephen Wells said after the victory, “Courts have affirmed time and again that state laws to ban cruel products are constitutional and enforceable, paving the way for similar measures in new jurisdictions.”

So unless the Supreme Court intervenes, which most experts think won’t happen, or the state temporarily allows non-compliant pork and eggs to be sold on an emergency basis, California will lose almost all of its pork supply, and a goodly portion of its eggs. Despite the inclination to believe that the pork and egg industries simply can’t afford to ignore the market demand from the fifth largest economy in the world, we see no signs in Iowa that pork producers are paying to rearrange their farrowing barns. They’ll probably just sell California’s share of pork to the Chinese. If there is pork to be found in the meat case after the first of the year it’s going to cost a ham and a soup bone. (An arm and a leg.)

According to the Associated Press, costs could increase as much as 60 percent which would make a package of bacon that cost $6 on December 31, 2021, cost $9.60 the very next day. This despite the fact that California officials have readily admitted that Proposition 12’s arbitrary animal housing standards are NOT based on any science.

So, in the New Year California consumers will wail and complain about the price and availability of pork, eggs, and veal and demand that something be done, never realizing that they created this mess.

KILL A VOLE...GO TO JAIL

It’s been said that trends and fads start in California and then spread to other states. In this case we can only hope that accepted wisdom is wrong but the evidence is not hopeful. Since Californians passed Proposition 12 back in 2018 twelve other states have passed laws that restrict farm animal confinement.

Two of California’s closest neighbors have followed California’s lead and the Arizona Farm Animal Confinement Initiative could appear on the 2022 ballot. It too would establish minimum space requirements for veal calves, sows and hens. It would also ban non-compliant product from other states. If animal rightists gather up 237,645 valid signatures by July 8, 2022, the Initiative will appear on Arizona ballots.

California’s liberal neighbor to the north is also trying to qualify an initiative that goes even further than California’s Proposition. Oregon’s Initiative 13 would make criminals out of hunters, veterinarians, AI technicians, pest control workers and any rancher who pulls a calf or a lamb.

According to Tim Gruver writing for the Washington Post, Oregon’s proposed initiative would restrict fishing, trapping and punish the “intentional injury” of an animal that would bring undue suffering. Research labs would be prohibited from experimenting on “nonhuman mammals” like birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. If a vet put his hand inside a cow to assist a difficult birth he would have to be labeled a sex offender. Ditto a rancher, AI technician or technician collecting embryos from a cow or semen from a bull.

Gruver wrote that, “IP 13 organizers will have until July 2022 to gather the 112,020 signatures needed to get the initiative onto the November 2022 ballot.” David Andrew Michelson, the Portland animal rights activist behind the Initiative told reporters that the state’s $5.7 billion farming industry would adjust to the laws. “Crop production,” the animal rightists said, “would likely rise to make up for falling meat supplies.” But lest you think the farmers come out smelling like a rose at the rancher’s expense, if a farmer traps or kills voles, beaver or other animals he or she would also be made a criminal.

A BRIEF PAUSE FOR PAUSE

It seems states are engaged in a nasty game of trying to outdo each other in who

can write the most idiotic animal rights proposition or initiative. So far we’d have to say that Colorado wins the prize. According to Jaclyn Krymowski writing for Protect the Harvest, Colorado’s Proposition 16 also known as the PAUSE Act, (Protect Animals from Unnecessary Suffering and Exploitation), “would ban artificial insemination, pregnancy checks, semen collection, and would change the meaning of the phrase ‘sexual act with an animal’ so that it would include any intrusion or penetration, however slight, with an object or part of a person’s body into an animal’s anus or genitals.”

According to Krymowski, “Prop 16 would have labeled every rancher, veterinarian and pet and livestock breeder who uses proven and accepted practices in caring for animals as felony sex offenders.”

Colorado Farm Bureau said the proposal would have ended animal agriculture, rodeos and dog shows. It also barred pets and farm animals from being spayed or neutered.

If you noticed we are talking in the past tense when referring to the PAUSE Act. Its sponsors received a hard blow when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in a 7-0 decision that the State Title Board incorrectly gave a green light to Initiative 16. According to the Colorado Livestock Association, “The Title Board must decide if a proposed initiative consists of just one subject and, if it does, set a fair and accurate ballot title. The Court held that Initiative 16 contained multiple subjects and, given its complexity, could mislead voters when they cast their ballots.” The association called the Proposition, “One of the most radical ballot initiatives this state has ever seen.”

Even though PAUSE is taking a time-out it could be a brief one. So it’s interesting to see what it would have done if passed. Perhaps its most outrageous part was that it would have required farm animals to have been allowed to live at least a quarter of their normal lifespan before they could be slaughtered. And it defined the “natural lifespan” as 20 years for a cow, eight for a chicken, 10 for a turkey, 6 years for ducks and rabbits and 15 years for pigs and sheep. And even then the animal had to be slaughtered “in such a way that the animal does not needlessly suffer.”

I don’t know about you but I have never owned a 20-year-old cow or 15-year-old ewe and even as a writer I can’t come up with words to define, “needlessly suffer.”

Do the math and you’ll find that under PAUSE a beef animal would have to live five years before it could be turned into some very tough meat. Needless to say, as Krymowski writes, “This would greatly increase the cost of animal protein products for consumers at the retail and food service levels.”

YOU THINK?

According to Terry Fankhauser, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, “This would ultimately result in greatly increased prices at the meat counter, potential limits on food availability, and would make feeding Colorado families much more difficult in already challenging times.

“Increasing the production cycle by three years and trying to maintain the same beef supply on a shrinking land resource would be impossible. Logistically the beef supply would be reduced by 60 percent and would likely translate to beef prices that would more than double at the consumer level and the same time driving producers out of production.”

And cattlemen wouldn’t even be the ones to suffer the most under PAUSE. Its passage would’ve equated to an 11-fold increase in time on feed for poultry.

NOT SO FAST

Doug Friednash writing for the Denver Post quoted Bill Hammerich, CEO of the Colorado Livestock Association, who called Initiative 16 the “Absolute worst agricultural bill or initiative I’ve ever seen. The measure is so extreme that even in Colorado’s liberal atmosphere, it would never see the light of day in the legislature. I can’t see how the industry complies or survives. We couldn’t be competitive with other states.”

Colorado is home to 34,000 farms and ranches covering 33 million acres of land, which is nearly half of the state’s total land. Had PAUSE become law ranchers in the state couldn’t manage or produce cattle that would be suitable for today’s consumer. Such a proposal would also hinder Colorado’s ability to export beef to countries like Japan, who will not accept beef from cattle over 30 months of age.

Travis Traylor of Colorado State University said, “Colorado would realistically lose $5 billion dollars in livestock sales, as well as eliminating multiple thousands of jobs, destroying rural communities and schools, and lay vacant hundreds of thousands of acres of regenerative but non-tillable natural resources that right now are being utilized to feed an ever-increasing population.”

According to the Denver Post the initiative was actually a campaign to end meat, poultry and dairy production in Colorado.

It’s not just Colorado ranchers who would have been BIG losers. Farmers there would have been upended as well as 70 percent of Colorado’s corn is used for livestock feed.

Unfortunately, the court’s action does not necessarily mean we’ve seen the last of PAUSE. If the animal rights groups want to have another shot at it all they have to do is redraft their measure to address the concerns of the Colorado Supreme Court and gather the signatures. Meanwhile, Colorado ranchers shouldn’t get too cocky about the legal victory because if the past is prologue, this is just a bump in the road for the animal rightists.

NO HAM AND EGGS

The proposition, initiative and referendum process is not something new in the way of getting a liberal agenda to become law. But previous animal rights propositions and initiatives dealt with things like vivisection, rodeo, and trapping. One reason it hasn’t been greatly used until now is that those attempts were seldom successful.

From 1940 through 1988 state legislatures had near complete control over policies related to the use of animals by agricultural, hunting, and other industries. But in 1988 it was California once again that gave life to the proposition process when animal rightists gathered up 600,000 signatures to ban the hunting of mountain lions. In June 1990, voters approved the measure, and its passage sparked renewed interest in the initiative process by animal protection advocates.

Since 1990, there has been a proliferation of animal protection initiatives. Between 1990 and 2018, animal protection advocates squared off against factory farming corporations, trophy hunters, and other animal-use industries and of the 58 statewide ballot measure campaigns, the animal rightists engaged in 40 of them. They won 69 percent of the time! Some of the wealthier animal rights groups who can afford better lawyers have a 73 percent win rate! This is exactly why special interests now prefer the proposition, referendum and initiative route because they can make a bad bill become a law and bypass state legislatures and Congress.

We’ll get a good indication after January 1, 2022, when California goes on a ham and egg-free diet if the rest of the states really want to go down the same path. ▫