Editor’s note: This story is developing and will be covered in depth in the coming weeks and months. Just two years after the livestock industry fought a ballot proposal titled Protect Animals from Unnecessary Suffering.
The Pueblo Chieftain
Colorado ranchers and agricultural groups are staunchly opposing an initiative that could end up on the 2022 ballot that they say would drastically alter livestock production and crumble the agricultural economy in the state.
Initiative 16, dubbed Protecting Animals from Unnecessary Suffering and Exploitation, or PAUSE, by proponents, is intended to expand animal cruelty definitions to livestock. And while it is meant to protect cows, chickens, pigs and other livestock from abuse, opponents argue that the initiative would negatively impact the state’s $47 billion agricultural industry.
“I don t know what the people who wrote it, what their true objectives were, but from the producer’s side, it is devastating. If this thing were to pass, I truly feel that agriculture in the state of Colorado would go,” Pueblo County Stockmen’s Association board member Carl Beeman said.
“At the bottom of every one of these ballot initiatives is an animal rights group that’s driven by a larger strategy, but it’s not as coordinated on the surface as people would like to think it is,” said John Robinson, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s senior vice president of membership and communications.
The initiatives’ supporters are “similar in their messaging tactics and driven by a larger conversation that’s not easily linked to one group,” Robinson told Farm Progress.
The Oregon proposal’s sponsor, a group called End Animal Cruelty, was started last year, according to its Twitter feed. The campaign’s leader, Portland animal activist David Michelson, has described himself on social media as a former psychologist and public health worker. He told a Facebook host in January that he became a vegan and animal activist after watching the 2018 documentary “Dominion,” which chronicles animal abuse.
Colorado ranchers worry controversial initiative would criminalize them
KMGH
and last updated 2021-04-23 21:28:27-04
DENVER â Weld County commissioners made their opposition to Initiative 16 clear this week after passing a resolution against it. The number one agriculture-producing county in the state and number eight in the country oppose Initiative 16 and strongly urges citizens to decline signing a petition to include the initiative on a 2022 ballot, a commissioner said while reading part of the resolution at a meeting Wednesday.
The initiative is formally known as PAUSE, or Protect Animals From Unnecessary Suffering and Exploitation. The goal, according to the Colorado PAUSE campaign s website, is to make sure farm animals are as equally protected as pets under state law.
Colorado Initiative 16 would tighten rules on treatment of livestock chieftain.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from chieftain.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.