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Slaughterhouse with 20% of U.S. lamb capacity feels targeted by proposed Denver ban that aims to end factory farms

An animal rights group backing a ballot initiative that would ban slaughterhouses in Denver is adamant that its campaign is not targeted at any individual business — even if just one slaughterhouse is active in the city.

Instead, the nascent grassroots group Pro-Animal Future has higher aspirations: to upend an industry that it describes as wrong for animals, workers and the environment, spokesperson Olivia Hammond said. Organizers view the Denver slaughterhouse measure in the Nov. 5 election — and a companion ballot question that would ban future production and sales of select fur products in the city — as stepping stones.

“Our hope is that measures like this can spark a gradual evolution on a societal level away from these types of industries that exploit animals,” Hammond said in an interview.  “There are no factory farms in Denver, which is eventually what we would sort of like to work our way up to potentially — statewide factory farming bans.”

Representatives of the Superior Farms lamb slaughter and processing facility on North Clarkson Street can’t help but feel targeted by the group’s ballot measure. And the campaign’s frank talk about ending animal agriculture as it is known today is setting off alarm bells well beyond the long-established operation on the north end of town.

“The passage of such a measure would establish an unnecessary punitive precedent, jeopardizing millions of dollars of commerce and necessary food production in our state,” said Zach Riley, the CEO of the Colorado Livestock Association, in a statement earlier this month.

The group’s companion fur measure would ban the manufacturing, sale, trade and even display of select fur products in the city starting on July 1, 2025, if voters adopt it in November. There are carveouts for leather and cowhide, sheep and lambskin, and any animal pelt or skin preserved through taxidermy — along with product sales expressly permitted by state or federal law.

Both measures were approved for the ballot a full year early as Hammond said the group aimed to reach voters in the higher-turnout 2024 presidential election.

While Hammond and Pro-Animal Future representatives haven’t been shy about talking in broad terms about larger goals, the campaign against the slaughterhouse measure is focusing on the impact on Superior Farms and the potential ripple effects for the Colorado economy, should Denver voters approve the ban.

Ian Silverii, a longtime Democratic consultant who’s the spokesman for that campaign — named “Stop the Ban. Protect Jobs.” — describes the Superior Farms facility as a roughly 70-year-old, employee-owned business with 160 workers who are predominantly Latinos. The business is located just west of the South Platte River in Denver’s Globeville neighborhood.

Shutting down the slaughterhouse as part of a broader political effort would hurt those employees, their families and Denver’s economy, he said. It also — counter to what proponents believe — would harm animal welfare and the environment, Silverii argued.

“People aren’t going to stop eating meat because the local slaughterhouse shuts down, they are just going to get it from elsewhere,” he said. “It will just move that process farther away, which decreases sustainability and increases its carbon footprint.”

He added that Temple Grandin, the renowned animal behaviorist and advocate for the humane treatment of livestock, was a consultant at one point on the design of Superior Farms’ facility. It is routinely inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, providing consumers with assurances about safety and the treatment of the animals brought there for slaughter, Silverii said.

Facility is one of largest U.S. lamb slaughterhouses

Agriculture is a $47 billion industry in Colorado that supports nearly 200,000 jobs, according to state data.

Given the economic stake, the livestock side of the industry and its allies are lining up against the slaughterhouse measure. The opposition campaign has out-fundraised proponents 3-to-1 so far, with a more than $350,000 cash advantage, campaign finance records showed in recent days.

Researchers at Colorado State University’s Regional Economic Development Institute released a report in the spring seeking to weigh the impact of a Denver slaughterhouse ban on the state’s economy.

Superior Farms may operate the only slaughterhouse in Denver, but the building plays a significant role in lamb meat production in the United States, CSU researchers found. It is among the five largest lamb slaughterhouses in the U.S., according to the report, having killed and processed approximately 300,000 animals in 2022.

All told, it accounts for 15 to 20% of all lamb processing capacity in the U.S., the report says.

Researchers presented three scenarios for the economic fallout anticipated from the ban in Colorado. When accounting for the multiplier effects of the Superior Farms facility shutting down, the best-case scenario was that 80% of lost economic activity would shift elsewhere in Colorado. The state’s economy would shed just under 700 jobs and a little over $215 million of economic activity if the ban comes to pass.

In a worst-case scenario — one in which the economic activity generated by the Superior Farms plant ceases and leaves the state entirely — Colorado could lose 2,787 jobs and $861 million in economic activity, according to the report.

Dawn Thilmany, the agricultural economist and CSU professor who was the report’s lead author, said she viewed even worst-case estimates as somewhat conservative. That’s because researchers did not try to account for Colorado lamb and sheep farming operations that could close without a slaughterhouse to buy their animals, she said.

Thilmany and her research team have not taken an official position on either the slaughterhouse or fur ban measures. But she suggested the slaughterhouse measure was unlikely to change consumer behaviors when it comes to buying what is already largely viewed as a specialty meat.

Shoppers are just likely to get lamb from other sources, mostly likely farms in New Zealand.

“You can’t change people’s values with a policy, usually,” Thilmany said. “You just push the demand for meat from national to international offerings.”

The ballot measure’s sponsors acknowledge there would be some economic impact. It includes a section that would mandate that the city prioritize people who lose their jobs at the Superior Farms facility in future workforce training and job assistance programs.

But Pro-Animal Future doesn’t put much stock in CSU’s analysis. The campaign asked another agricultural economist, University of Colorado Denver professor Kyle Montanio, to review the CSU report.

For Montanio, the paper is incomplete when it comes to making the case that the worst-case scenario was possible. He argues the research — which makes one reference to the ripple effects of the 2020 closure of a lamb processing facility in Greeley — does not provide any meaningful point of comparison on which to base such eye-popping findings.

“It is very difficult to even understand where those numbers are coming from,” he said.

Fundraising numbers paint a clearer picture of the ballot fight to come.

All $177,886 contributed to the proponents’ committee has come from Pro-Animal Future. Major contributors to the opposing campaign have included the American Sheep Industry Association ($80,000), the National Cattleman’s Beef Association ($40,000) and the United Food and Commercial Workers labor union ($25,000).

Superior Farms, which is headquartered in Sacramento, alone has donated a combined $160,000 in cash and in-kind contributions to the Stop the Ban campaign. In total, it’s raised $535,493.

Group comes under scrutiny

Silverii has questioned Pro-Animal Future’s Colorado credentials, referring to his campaign’s opponents as “a special-interest group largely from out of state that seems to have a lot of out-of-state spokespeople.”

Hammond, though, has pushed back on assertions that the group parachuted into the city. She says Pro-Animal Future is based in Denver, she lives in Denver and all of the group’s volunteers live in Denver or surrounding cities. Boulder resident Aidan Cook, a longtime animal-rights activist, incorporated the group with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office in March 2023, records show.

The committee’s campaign finance records do not reveal the identities of its donors, with the nonprofit listed as the contributor for each large campaign donation. Cook has identified the campaign’s largest donors to date as the Craigslist Charitable Fund, Animal Charity Evaluators and the Phauna Foundation. Each of those groups has given $50,000, with the rest of the money coming from individuals and smaller organizations.

Cook said he planned to update the campaign website to better illuminate its donors.

“We’re not trying to be opaque with our funding,” he said.

Denver City Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer, sees Denver’s signature threshold for ballot initiatives — just 8,940 to get on the 2024 ballot, or 2% of active registered voters in the city — as ripe to be taken advantage of by activist groups. Pro-Animal Future turned in more than 10,000 valid signatures for each of this year’s ballot measures.

“It feels to me like people are playing politics with other people’s lives and using the low threshold to get a ballot measure on our ballot to do it — and that is upsetting to me,” Sawyer said, pointing to the slaughterhouse ban in particular. She plans to vote no.

But Montanio, the CU professor, knows how he is voting in November, at least when it comes to the slaughterhouse ban: Count him as a yes.

He noted that meat consumption was a carbon-intensive activity, and the potential environmental impacts of shutting down the Superior Farms facility — including decreased water usage — would be a net gain, in his view.

“That comes from my own biases of climate change being one of the things that I care about most deeply and that I see to be one of the most costly challenges in the long term,” he said.

Hammond and Pro-Animal Future insist there is room within their campaign for people who eat meat.

“We feel this is letting people take a look at the industry and admit that it is wrong in certain ways — and that it makes them uncomfortable,” Hammond said, adding: “Just like you can drive a car and support environmental causes, meat eaters can support a movement towards a more humane food system.”

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