That will never happen here!

Not surprising, but activists in a California county are attempting to eliminate and prohibit animal agriculture from within the county.

Though located in California’s wine country, Sonoma County is home to dairy and poultry farms, and an animal rights group reportedly wishes to bring an end to those operations. At last report, the group is a mere 2,000 signatures short of getting an initiative called “Prohibition on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” on a ballot in front of voters in 2024.

When California voters approved Proposition 12, which dictates how hogs and poultry are raised across the country if the end product is to be sold in the Golden State, I argued that those who pushed the measure on the ballot were masking their “concern” for animal welfare as a step to ban animal agriculture.

This Sonoma County measure rips off that mask.

Livestock producers — actually, anybody in rural Minnesota and elsewhere — need to pay attention to this. A common reaction is to say, “That’s California for ya. That’s 2,000 miles away. That can’t happen here.”

I’d like to agree with that assessment, but it doesn’t seem that long ago that townships in Minnesota were looking for the power to prohibit hog barns from being built. Such scrutinization did turn on the lightbulbs for producers or prospective producers to be more in tune with the concerns of the residents around them.

Most of those concerns were from an environmental argument regarding the alleged or presumed damage such operations would incur on the area’s water and air quality.

The antagonists in the Sonoma County case are out to put livestock producers out of business, plain and simple. The ramifications of such a measure go far beyond the producers and their families. If animal agriculture is to go the way of the Edsel, soon to suffer the same fate would be processing plants, feed companies, veterinarians, pharmaceutical companies and most other allied industries. The trickle-down impact would cripple the rural economy.

Activists come in all shapes, with different motives, and it doesn’t matter if the intent is not wanting livestock “in my backyard” or not wanting animal agriculture to exist at all. The end result would be crushing to the rural economy nationwide.

Even though Sonoma County may be thousands of miles away, like-minded activists may live very close to you right now — maybe in the nearest metro area, maybe in the next town, maybe within your country mile.

Pay attention to what is going on in Sonoma County, and stand with the animal agriculturists there before you suffer the same fate.

Don’t hide behind “That will never happen here!” because it just might, and that movement needs to be stopped before it gets out of the gate.

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