
Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays features comments from Colorado Cattlemen’s Association Executive Vice President Erin Karney Spaur about the fight against anti-animal agricultural groups currently staged in Denver, Colorado.
Leading into the 2024 election, while many people are focused on the Presidential Race and other high-ranking elections, Karney says that there is an anti-animal agricultural group that people in the livestock business need to be watching and a ballot initiative to be aware of.
The group is known as Pro Animal Future, and they have been integral in getting Initiated Ordinance 309 onto the ballot in the city and county of Denver. The initiative would ban slaughterhouses in the city and county of Denver, namely a sheep slaughterhouse called Superior Farms, the only remaining slaughterhouse in Denver. Also on the ballot is Initiated Ordinance 308 which would ban fur sales in the area.
“When you think about Denver, you think about the stockyards because it was the meat-packing district down there,” Karney said. “One slaughterhouse remains, Superior Farms.”
With 160 employees, Superior Farms is one of the largest lamb processing plants in the United States.
Why should a cattlemen’s association be concerned about preserving a lamb slaughterhouse? Karney said, “Ultimately, it comes down to Pro-Animal Future and their broad goals of, not only eliminating that slaughterhouse but also eliminating animal agriculture.”
Karney believes that the city and county of Denver were targeted because of a low threshold to get on the ballot and the Left to Center Denver voter base, but that isn’t all.
“They’ve made it very clear in multiple channels and interviews that Denver is just a testing ground to try their message and refine their campaign to take it to other cities,” Karney commented. “Our message is that these out-of-state interest groups have no stake in the future of Denver, or of Colorado. There will be real impacts on the employees who are residents of the city and county of Denver, and on the community that will lose that local food source and the revenue from the local business. It also sets a dangerous precedent for the city and county of Denver to ban one single business based on what they produce or manufacture.”
Karney said that there is a growing force of opposition to Pro Animal Future, and producers can donate via the website, stopthebanprotectjobs.com.
Agriculturalists have supported the opposition by raising three-quarters of a million dollars, and donations have been added by Superior Farms, the American Sheep Industry Association, the National Pork Producers Council, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Colorado Livestock Association, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Labor Union.
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