According to the Denver Gazette- Denver voters rejected the proposal to shut down the city’s only slaughterhouse.
The results on Tuesday night showed voters resoundingly defeating the measure, which was losing by about 40 points.
Only about 35.6% of Denver voters supported it, compared to the 64.4% who voted against it, according to the latest tally.
Gustavo Fernandez, the general manager of Superior Farms Denver, released a statement Tuesday night.
“I can’t tell you how relieved I am,” Fernandez said. “I and the workers at this facility just want to do our jobs and provide for our families. Now we can get back to that without this huge weight on our shoulders. Thank you, Denver!”
“We are eager for the campaign to be over regardless of the results. We feel like we’ve done what we can, learned what we can, and now we have to let go and see what happens,” said Olivia Hammond, a member of Pro Animal Future, the group that pushed both the fur and slaughterhouse bans. Initiated Ordinance 308, the “Fur Ban” proposal, was on track to be defeated by a significant margin, with initial results showing a 13 percentage-point margin.
The ban targeted Superior Farms, an employee-owned meat processing plant that provides lamb meat to Denver and the entire country. Superior Farms employs roughly 160 people in a minority-majority neighborhood.
Proponents argued that slaughterhouses are inhumane for the animals and workers, pointing to what they described as documented physical and mental health issues among slaughterhouse employees nationwide. As envisioned, the proposal requires the Denver government to prioritize employees who will lose their jobs because of the shutdown.
Before the election- the Oklahoma Farm Report featured comments from Colorado Cattlemen’s Association Executive Vice President Erin Karney Spaur about the fight against an anti-animal agricultural group currently staged in Denver, Colorado.
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.”
