The proposed petition in Oregon that would ban all hunting and fishing, as well as ranching and more, failed both its signature counts to get on the November ballot, according to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office.
Known as the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions (PEACE) Act, Initiative Petition 28, would reclassifying ranching, fishing and hunting as animal abuse. The sponsors of the initiative submitted about 142,000 signatures—well over the required 117,000 signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot—but a check of a sampled 1,000 signatures found that only about 80-percnt of the signatures were valid.
“Once the standard statistical formula was applied, it was determined that the petition did not have enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot,” said a spokesman for the Oregon Secretary of State to KGW8.
A subsequent, standard signature verification process was then completed, and it was determined that the petition did not have sufficient valid signatures to make the ballot. Thus, the PEACE act failed both tests.
If the PEACE Act had made the ballot, and was passed by a majority of voters, the state’s ranching industry, as well as hunting, fishing and game management, would have effectively been criminalized. Even many veterinary practices would have been reclassified as animal cruelty. Some livestock breeding practices would actually have been classified as sexual assault.
Nevertheless, the initiative’s chief petitioner, David Michelson, argued that a “Humane Transition Fund” would pay for Oregonians to enter a vegan nirvana, and that society would simply adjust.
This petition went on for about 4,000 words of legal requirements—though voters would have seen a shorter version on their ballots—written to basically end hunting, fishing and ranching. It never acknowledged that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service apportioned $1 billion from excise taxes paid on guns and ammunition to state wildlife agencies in 2025 or that about $20 million went to Oregon last year. It also did not touch on how hunters manage game populations, or how even vegetarians could not opt out, as farmers need to defend their crops from depredating wildlife.
Thankfully this radical attack on the American way of life has failed. For now. We'll keep you posted, in the inevitable event something like this is tried again.
