Disastrous Oregon Animal Rights Measure Fails to Make Ballot

By Ward Clark | 2:28 PM on July 27, 2026

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*The author on a Colorado elk hunt. (Credit: Ward Clark)*

An Oregon animal-rights initiative, one that would have effectively banned animal agriculture, hunting, fishing, and possibly even keeping pets, has failed to make the 2026 ballot. The measure, misleadingly called the PEACE Act, initially claimed to have signatures to qualify, but after invalid signatures were excluded, the measure fell short of requirements.

That's good news, which is in short supply out of Oregon these days.

Oregon hunters, anglers and farmers can breathe a sigh of relief.
Initiative Petition 28 — the deceptively branded animal-rights proposal that would have effectively criminalized hunting, fishing, ranching and a long list of other normal activities — will not appear on Oregon’s November ballot after all.
And this one came down to the wire.

What's amazing is that something this catastrophically stupid would have gained signatures beyond single digits, even in Oregon. But, then, Portland...

The regular people of Oregon have dodged a bullet here, quite a big one, in fact, when you look at the scope of what was proposed.

IP28 sought to remove the exemptions in Oregon’s animal-cruelty statutes that protect lawful hunting, fishing, trapping, ranching, farming, pest control and accepted animal-husbandry practices.
Under the proposal, killing or injuring an animal would have been classified as abuse unless it was necessary to prevent immediate harm to a person or another animal.
That means hunters harvesting deer, anglers keeping fish, ranchers processing cattle, commercial fishermen bringing seafood to shore and farmers controlling pests could all have potentially faced criminal consequences.

That's right. You may well have faced criminal consequences for killing cockroaches in your kitchen.

This idiocy would have driven even more productive people out of Oregon, presumably leaving only the people who can tolerate living around cockroaches. Portland, now, is the spiritual homeland of Antifa, and they seem to be able to tolerate cockroaches quite well, being seemingly close relations both physically and intellectually.

But the ordinary folks? Telling people they can't hunt, raise cattle, catch fish, or even set a mousetrap, that's nutty even by Oregon standards.

It's alarming, though, how close this thing came to being on the ballot. The signature-gathering effort turned in more than 142,000 signatures, more than enough to put this stupidity on the November ballot. But the Oregon Secretary of State's office went through the list in two rounds of verification, which left the initiative 13,000 signatures short. That's enough to make one wonder if the petitioners just went in circles around the most liberal parts of Portland, over and over. We can take some small measure of comfort in noting that even liberal Governor Tina Kotek opposed this.

But had they made the signature requirement. Every national animal-rights group, from PETA down to the Gnarled Top County, Massachusetts Animal Rights and Legal Personhood for Insects Association, would have poured cash and volunteers into trying to get this thing passed. I happen to think it still would have failed, but it's startling that it came even this close.

For now, Oregon residents can breathe a sigh of relief - and order the steak.

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