Thousands of words have been written in the press, social media and by local political bodies to oppose ballot Measure J, authored by the Coalition to End Factory Farming. I have 550 words in this column. First I must disclose that I have been a vegetarian for 28 years.
When I first heard of J, I leaned strongly to voting yes. I began to read masses of dire predictions in social media and the press, urging a “no” vote. What really influenced me to look more carefully at J, and do some research, were the dire economic predictions, misinformation and name calling I was reading. Here is just a small sampling:
The goal is to mandate everyone become vegan. If concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Sonoma County close or downsize it will eliminate all animal agriculture in Sonoma County. J was created by Direct Action Everywhere (DXE). Protesters from DXE brought bird flu to two poultry CAFOS, causing the euthanizing of 250,000 birds. J will cause all meat to come from China or be lab grown. A vegan diet makes you sick, meat is necessary for survival. Some writers cried over the death of their cats, fed a vegan diet, rather than blaming themselves for not researching and understanding that cats are carnivores, while humans are omnivores.
Misinformation, drove me to extensive research and reading the entire ballot measure. The growing mass of No on J press and social media, with little or no commenting from yes on J, grows and grows and feeds on itself. I had to ask myself why those voting yes had so little to say. Detailed facts support J, but it is hard to create titillating sound bites from facts and data. With 550 words, I can’t print all the data here. I believe people are swayed by emotion, not spending hours on research and fact checking.
I have seen this dynamic before. My father was a hunter and gun owner and an excellent trap shooter until he was in his 90s. He was the lone advocate of gun control in his group of friends. He laughed at them when they said they needed to keep their AK47s. He said you can’t use them for hunting, they are for killing people, and no one is going to take your hunting and home-protection guns away from you. Another instance was a local political official citing that she did not know enough about an issue (not J) to make a decision on it. \When I sent her a link to a presentation by a PhD historian on the issue, she told me, “I don’t need some academic to tell me what to think, I have my lived experience.”
I urge you to read the ballot measure for yourself, research and visit the Yes on J website.
Jon Haveman, an economic analyst at Marin Economic Consulting, points to the flaws and omissions in No on J economic studies.
That includes the reports from Sonoma County’s Economic Development Board and Chico State’s Agribusiness Institute via the University of California Cooperative Extension, which use the shutdown of all animal agriculture in Sonoma County to compute economic impact, rather than the impact of elimination or downsizing 21 existing CAFOS.
I believe we eat way too much meat. To save our planet and mitigate climate change, that must change.
I voted Yes on J. I am a vegetarian. My reasons for Yes on J: the current scale of meat production is an unsustainable use of global, national and local water and food resources, the treatment of animals in industrial meat production is unethical, local CAFOs are unethical, you can get all needed protein from plants/ meat is not necessary for anyone’s diet, the conservative Farm Bureau is always against the progressive issues I am for, local food production (meat, dairy, produce) is out of my price range anyway, why should I shop local at unsupportable inflated prIces to back meat production I disagree with anyway? Plus, as Josette notes, the No crowd has been over the top.
It took me less than half-an-hour to confirm that I was being lied to by the “No on J” party line when I looked after the Sept 19th debate: https://www.csuchico.edu/ag/_assets/documents/sonoma-county-livestock-final.pdf
Well-said. Thank you for looking into the facts. I’m also voting yes on J.
I spent much of my childhood in Sonoma County. I lived next door to an egg ranch in Sebastopol. Most of my friends were the children of several different dairy farmers. Not one of the animal agriculture enterprises I was familiar with then would have been jeopardized by Measure J. What would be jeopardized are the mega-scale animal factories that put them all out of business.
As the “No on J” campaign demonstrates, there are no greater experts in all forms of manure than Big Ag.
To claim that there is no agenda to push us to vegan/lab grown food, means one has not done any investigation into DxE Strategic Roadmap to 2040, banning ALL Animal Agriculture. The creators of Measure J publicly state that they intend to ban all forms of it, even small farms, despite their false claim they “support small farms”. They believe that “no farms are good farms”. And they also publicly advocate for forced veganism and champion Lab Grown Meat.
To claim there are no nefarious intentions by ultra-wealthy venture capitalists in the Lab Grown Meat and Plant Based Factory Food industries is to deny the confirmed major funding source for Yes on J. Karuna/Ahimsa (Shaleen Shah and Karandikars) and Nicholas Owen Gunden not only fund many Animal Rights Extremist organizations to end Animal Agriculture, they are major donors to a similar ballot measure in Denver to ban their only meat processor. And the group currently running the Denver Ban is Pro-Animal Future, created by DxE member Aidan Cook.
This is all verifiable and public information for anyone willing to do a little research. And greed (by forcing your competition out of business, to reap billions) is a prime motivation for these financial backers.
As you know none of this is true. You and others believe it and so be it, so you keep repeating it.. Nothing will change, we will continue to have more and more CAFOs, more pollution, and the majority of people eating way too much meat for their health. No one is trying to outlaw eating meat, the vast majority of vegans and vegetarians have no interest in lab grown meat, nor are they forcing you to eat food from plants. Meat is not necessary for health as you and others keep repeating, but no one is telling you, you can’t have it. All of us and the planet would be much healthier without it or just having it once or twice a week.