A ballot initiative in Sonoma County, California, aims to restrict the size of livestock and poultry farms. The initiative has earned enough signatures to be included on the November ballot or be enacted as an ordinance, sparking debate between supporters and the local agricultural community.
The Coalition to End Factory Farming, a group consisting of roughly 30 anti-animal activists and environmentalists who want to ban CAFOs, is behind the initiative, which received 37,183 signatures of the 19,746 required signatures or 652 verified signatures from a sample size of 1,115 names. The Sonoma County Registrar of Voters is currently validating the signatures.
After verification, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors will decide the initiative’s fate — they can either adopt the ordinance or present it to voters in November or during a special election. The board is currently within the allotted 30 days to make their decision.
The initiative would phase out medium-size livestock operations as well as concentrated agricultural feeding operations in the county.
In this context, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines a CAFO as a large-scale industrial animal agriculture facility with a specific number of confined animals varying by species. The initiative aims to prohibit new CAFOs from opening and requires existing ones to either close, transition to another type of farm, or downsize to fall below the CAFO threshold.
Legally, farmers running a CAFO that are subject to inspections and a greater number of federal and state regulations.
Although numerous local nonprofits and animal rights groups support the initiative, the Sonoma County Farm Bureau points out that the Berkeley-based organization Direct Action Everywhere is the primary force behind the measure.
“We are not surprised that the ballot initiative qualified, given the lies and misinformation that was touted to collect signatures,” Dayna Ghirardelli, executive director of the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, told The Press Democrat. “We’ve had several folks tell us that they signed a petition to save Sonoma County farmers, and we’ve had to explain that their signature supported just the opposite.”
Local farmers have insisted that the wording of the initiative is misleading and that none of Sonoma County’s dairies or egg farms are factory farms.
According to the Sonoma County Gazette, Cassi King from Direct Action Everywhere argues that the initiative won’t impact many local farmers. “Even in Sonoma County, there are a thousand animal farms and only about two dozen that are considered CAFOs,” she said.
If passed, Sonoma County would be among the first in the U.S. to enact on a CAFO ban.
