AS OF MONDAY, 85.3% of Sonoma County voters have rejected Measure J, an initiative that would have banned or downsized an estimated 21 animal farms in Sonoma County.
In the days following Tuesday’s election, both its proponents and opponents agreed that the debate surrounding the issue revealed how little the public knows about farming and food systems.
“I think that the biggest thing that this measure did was really identify the need for broader adult agricultural literacy,” said Sonoma Agricultural Commissioner Andrew Smith. “People who live in Sonoma County have an obligation to understand where their food comes from. Part of that is understanding what contemporary agriculture looks, sounds and smells like. Agricultural producers have an obligation to help educate adult populations.”
Measure J targeted large- and medium-sized concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, which are defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as any farm that keeps animals stabled or confined for 45 days or more during a 12-month period in an area where no significant vegetation can grow.
“Compared to other states and other counties, we are small,” said Smith. “I want to say our largest dairy is 1,500 head. If you look at dairies in the valley and in other portions of the state, we’re talking about the average being 2,000 head. Most commercial poultry producers in the state have barn systems that provide animals with access to outdoors. But it’s free will. We don’t force people to go outside and spend part of their day outside. And it’s up to the livestock to decide whether they want to go out or not.”
Raising awareness
Kathy Tresch is a Sonoma County dairy farmer whose family farm dates to the 1870s. With more than 2,500 acres and 750 milking cows, her farm fell just inside the definition of a CAFO.
“I do think that as people investigated more of what our local farms are about, they learned a lot,” she said, referencing the practice of bringing animals indoors during rainy season. “We keep our cows off of the pastures when they’re super wet and could be eroded and cause sediment to go into the creeks, and it also protects the cows.”
In the city of Berkeley, the coalition used that same EPA definition for Measure DD, which passed. That effort was targeted at Golden Gate Fields, a racetrack that the coalition said stabled more than 500 horses. Golden Gate Fields closed in June after the city passed a stricter animal welfare ordinance to reduce horse deaths.
“I think that there’s absolutely a huge amount of awareness that has been raised during this campaign,” said Cassie King with the Coalition to End Factory Farming, the group that instigated the ballot initiative. She said the attention garnered over 150 different press articles.
“We’ve gotten very valuable feedback from residents and groups in Sonoma County about what they would prefer to see done to protect animals and our environment from abusive practices or pollution,” she said. “Stopping CAFO’s helps small farms that can’t compete with industrialized monopolies like Perdue.”
Perdue Farms runs a poultry processing plant in Petaluma. As part of their activism, one of the groups in the Coalition to End Factory Farming, the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, has a history of trespassing to take pictures or remove animals from what it sees as abusive environments.
On Friday, Sonoma County Judge Robert LaForge scheduled a felony trial in May for one of Direct Action Everywhere’s members Zoe Rosenberg, who is being prosecuted for removing four chickens from Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse in June 2023. Their co-founder, Wayne Hsiung, was arrested last November on suspicion of felony trespassing at chicken and duck farms in 2018 and 2019. King said that whenever they gather evidence of illegal conditions, there is no entity willing to enforce the law, starting with the sheriff’s office.
“Time and time again, the sheriff tells us they are not able to take action and points us somewhere else,” she said. “It’s a game of hot potato where no agency wants to take responsibility for holding these powerful companies accountable. Sometimes they tell us to go to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which tells us to go to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA then says this is a county issue, go to the sheriff.”
The group’s photographs were central to the Yes on Measure J campaign, pictures of chickens with wings stuck in wire flooring, lying helpless on their backs or confined in intensely crowded conditions were part of the case that motivated nearly 22,000 people to vote in favor of Measure J.
“I can go anywhere in human civilization and find photographs that will help me show the deepest despair and the lowest level of socio-economic class and system,” said Smith. “You can do that with humans just as much as you can do that with animals. I guess that’s part of the education. There are sometimes animals that die. Yes. Nothing’s perfect. When you look at what humans do to humans around the world in history, and then you look at agriculture, you’re like okay, every system has its dark side and its drawbacks and its cost. But do the benefits of the system outweigh the costs?”
“Factory farms confine so many animals that their model for profit assumes a high mortality rate,” said King. “They assume that a certain number of animals are going to die early on in their lives before even their slaughter date, which is also a young point in their lives.”
‘You don’t legislate change’
If it had passed, the measure would have obligated the Agricultural Commissioner to be the measure’s enforcer. Smith’s office would have also been responsible for retraining those farm workers who might be displaced when a farm is closed. When asked if these new duties were possible, Smith referenced 19th century standards.
“For agricultural commissioners to be tasked with prohibiting agriculture goes holistically against what they have been doing and mandated to do since 1881,” said Smith. He said Sonoma County was built on ranching and animal agriculture, first with cattle, then with dairies and egg production.
Smith recounted a moderated public debate between the Coalition to End Factory Farms and some local producers. He said, the coalition argued that Sonoma was the perfect spot to ban factory farming because of its progressive liberal politics, even though the problems were not necessarily bad there.
“I think that change often starts in areas where there are just enough presence and enough people to address issues in their own community and set an example that can be followed in other parts of the country,” King said. “For example, the gay rights movement did not start in Arkansas.”
“You don’t legislate change,” said Smith. “You don’t mandate social change. If you want people to change what they choose to eat, then you have to do that one group at a time, one person at a time.”
“If you look at their roadmap, they would like to eliminate all animal agriculture by 2040 everywhere,” said Tresch. “They have an agenda. I don’t think they’re going to back away from it.”
Although plant-based alternatives to meat are appearing in more grocery stores and on menus, the mass move away from meat is not substantial. A recent Gallup poll shows just 4% of Americans identify as vegetarian. A similar percent was found by the Baltimore nonprofit the Vegetarian Resource Group, which also found three-fifths of U.S. households now eat vegetarian at least on occasion.
Smith said he wants people to know that Sonoma County was the place for many pioneering organic practices.
“They get certifications that point to the humane treatment of their animals. They are some of the earliest adopters of climate smart adaptations, and they’re aware of how their management systems impact the animals that they depend on for their livelihood, “ he said.
On Saturday, the Coalition to End Factory Farming organized another protest in Petaluma against the Perdue processing plant.
