Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays features comments from Colorado Cattlemen’s Association Executive Vice President Erin Karney Spaur as she goes in-depth about Pro Animal Future, a group trying to end animal agriculture beginning with banning fur sales and slaughterhouses in the city and county of Denver, Colorado.
Yesterday, her featured comments covered the group’s ballot initiatives that agricultural groups are trying to garner opposition to: Initiated Ordinance 309 to ban slaughterhouses and Initiated Ordinance 308 to ban fur sales. Initiated Ordinance 309 would shut down the only remaining slaughterhouse in Denver which happens to be one of the largest lamb processing plants in the country. Listen to those comments here.
Pro Animal Future is an animal extremist organization that is exceptionally dangerous to animal agricultural producers. “The leaders of Pro Animal Future are radical animal activists,” Karney said. “While on the surface, it looks like they are only trying to ban one slaughterhouse in the city of Denver, when we dug deeper and listened to interviews and podcasts that they have recently been featured in, they make it very clear that it is not just about one slaughterhouse in Denver. They are ultimately trying to test their message to build intelligence on us as an industry, our message, and how the slaughterhouse employees will respond. More importantly, they are learning how to build and refine a campaign to replicate in other cities.”
Pro Animal Future sees a win even if their ballot initiative fails, but still gets 40 percent of the votes because they have gained intelligence on the opposition and convinced forty percent of voters to stand with them. This will aid them in building their next campaign to carry to the next city or county.
“They have also stated that their ultimate goal is to shock the nation with statewide ballot measures,” Karney said. “As an industry, we must take this seriously. Not only for slaughterhouses but also for our entire industry from the cow calf producer to the processing facility.”
Opposition to Pro Animal Future is gathering via the website stopthebanprotectjobs.com. Producers are also encouraged to look at the Pro Animal Future website at proanimal.org to see the threat to all U.S. animal agriculture.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR at the top of the story for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
