{"id":46138,"date":"2021-06-21T16:43:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T22:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-court-rejects-animal-cruelty-measure-opposed-by-farmers-ranchers\/"},"modified":"2021-06-21T22:43:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T22:43:00","slug":"colorado-court-rejects-animal-cruelty-measure-opposed-by-farmers-ranchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-court-rejects-animal-cruelty-measure-opposed-by-farmers-ranchers\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado court rejects animal cruelty measure opposed by farmers, ranchers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cattle
Cattle await auction at the Producer\u2019s Livestock Marketing Association Sale Barn in Greeley in 2019. The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday rejected a proposed 2022 ballot question about animal cruelty. (Jeremy Sparig\/Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday rejected a proposed 2022 ballot question about animal cruelty, saying the measure seeking to define common ranching and farming practices as sex acts violates a clause in the state constitution.<\/p>\n

The court specifically ruled that Initiative 16 violates the Colorado Constitution\u2019s single-subject requirement, which says a ballot question or piece of legislation cannot cover unrelated topics.<\/p>\n

The measure, Initiative 16, would have not only made artificial insemination against the law, it would also have required that ranch animals get to live 25% of their lifespan before heading to slaughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitiative 16 fails to satisfy the single-subject requirement because expanding the definition of \u2018sexual act with an animal\u2019 isn\u2019t necessarily and properly connected to the measure\u2019s central focus of incorporating livestock into the animal cruelty statutes,\u201d Justice William W. Hood wrote in the court\u2019s opinion.<\/p>\n

The decision returns the question to the state\u2019s title board, housed in the Colorado Secretary of State\u2019s Office, and to proponents of the initiative. But the court\u2019s decision means proponents will have to file a new measure to move forward and abide by the single-subject rule requirement.<\/p>\n

Farmers and ranchers are strongly opposed to the ballot initiative, saying that it would define common agricultural practices for assisting reproduction or checking an animal\u2019s reproductive organs as \u201csex acts.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the requirements in the initiative was that cows, hogs and other livestock get to live at least 25% of their natural lives before heading to the slaughterhouse, which ranchers argued would devastate Colorado\u2019s agriculture economy.<\/p>\n

Cattle are typically slaughtered for beef around age 2, but under the proposal, that would change to age 5. By then, the meat is no longer fit for tender steaks, the extra age making cuts tough and unappetizing, ranchers say.<\/p>\n

Janie VanWinkle, who has 470 cows in Fruita and Grand Junction, was attending the Colorado Cattlemen\u2019s Association annual state convention when news of the court ruling began to spread Monday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s certainly improved the mood around here,\u201d she said via phone from the three-day meeting in Grand Junction. \u201cEverybody is talking about it and feeling good.\u201d<\/p>\n

VanWinkle, who was on horseback Saturday and on a tractor Sunday, said ranchers spend their lives caring for their animals, which is why she found the ballot measure offensive. \u201cEverything we do is focused on the resources and the livestock,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Even though the proposal is dead for now, ranchers need to stay vigilant about educating the public about the livestock industry, she said. \u201cIt\u2019s really important to build relationships and connect with consumers and voters about the care that we give our animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kenny Rogers, a cattle rancher in Yuma, took a break from putting up fencing to celebrate. \u201cI have an unopened, top-shelf bottle of Scotch that should be opened now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But Rogers worries the battle for ranchers isn\u2019t over. \u201cMy fear is they\u2019ll simply regroup and keep coming at us. They have much deeper pockets than we do for these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title board gave the initiative\u2019s backers approval to begin gathering signatures in mid-April, but lawyers representing ranchers and farmers took the matter to court.<\/p>\n

The backers of Initiative 16 had until Oct. 18 to collect and turn in the signatures of about 125,000 registered Colorado voters to get the question on the 2022 ballot.<\/p>\n

Should the proponents decide to change their ballot language, they will have to go before the title board again with a new measure and, if the question is approved, the signature-collection deadline would reset.<\/p>\n

The ballot measure proposed removing the livestock exemption in state statute for animal cruelty and expanding the definition of a sex act with an animal. Sex acts with an animal would have included \u201cany intrusion or penetration, however slight, with an object or part of a person\u2019s body into an animal\u2019s anus or genitals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ranchers say that would prevent them from performing artificial inseminations, embryo transfers, pregnancy checks and a host of other common practices.<\/p>\n

The ballot measure also defined animals\u2019 natural lifespans: 20 years for a cow, 15 for a pig, eight for a chicken, six for a rabbit. Each must get to live at least a quarter of its natural life before going to harvest, it said.<\/p>\n

At the title board hearing, an attorney for a farming and ranching coalition called Coloradans for Animal Care argued that the measure violated the single-subject rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a measure that has been concocted to address multiple issues that really have no necessary or clear connection to one another,\u201d Mark Grueskin, an attorney representing the livestock groups, said then. He noted that the measure defines both a pig\u2019s lifespan and sex acts with animals.<\/p>\n

Grueskin chuckled when reading the website for the measure, where backers wrote that their intent is to protect animals from being \u201cabandoned, abused, neglected, mistreated or sexually assaulted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSexually assaulted?\u201d Grueskin said. \u201cThat is their politically charged code to get this past a majority of voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Backers of the proposal said then the subject of their proposed measure was clear: Everything in it is connected to animal cruelty. The two proponents of the measure, Alexander Sage and Brent Johannes, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday about whether they plan to rewrite the measure.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Farm Bureau called the ruling a win for \u201cpet owners, livestock owners and anyone in Colorado who interacts with animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the decision is also a win for \u201canyone who\u2019s interested in a responsible ballot initiative process,\u201d said Shawn Martini, the bureau\u2019s vice president for advocacy. \u201cThis process has been abused for far too long, and this is yet another reminder that ambiguous language, bait-and-switch tactics, and attempts to conceal the real-world results of ballot initiatives are bad for our state and will not be allowed to stand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to <\/em>coloradosun.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Initiative 16 heads back to the title board and its proponents for change<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,1587,28,1398,29,1263],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-46138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-farms","tag-headlines","tag-livestock-farming","tag-newsletter","tag-ranching"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46138"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=46138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}