New “PEACE” activist initiative criminalizes hunting, fishing, pest control, and breeding practices

The fight isn’t happening in the woods or out on the water yet – it’s happening on clipboards, signature sheets, and ballot language that sounds simple until you read what it actually does.

In a KATU report, Victor Park laid out a controversial Oregon petition effort that supporters say is about ending cruelty, while critics warn it would turn huge parts of daily life into criminal acts. 

The group behind it calls itself the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions – PEACE – and Park reported they’re closing in on the signatures needed to put the question before voters.

If it makes the ballot and passes, Park said the measure would criminalize “injuring or killing animals” across a wide sweep of activities, including hunting, fishing, farming, ranching, trapping, pest control, research and teaching, and even breeding practices, with only limited exceptions for some veterinary practices and self-defense.

A Petition With A Huge Reach

Park told viewers the group is already around 90% of the way to the signature threshold needed to refer the measure to voters.

He said the campaign has gathered about 105,000 signatures and needs roughly 12,000 more to reach the number required for a November ballot – though the state still has to verify them.

That might sound like a procedural detail, but it’s a major moment. Once a petition gets close, it stops being a fringe idea and starts becoming something every lawmaker, business owner, and working family has to pay attention to.

Park also noted this is not the first time a group has tried to criminalize hunting and fishing in Oregon. The difference, he said, is the attention and momentum this time, which has restaurant owners and hunting organizations treating it like a real threat instead of a political stunt.

And if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t hunt or fish and thinks, “This has nothing to do with me,” the wording Park described should make you pause. The scope isn’t narrow. It’s not “no trophy hunting” or “ban some traps.” It’s closer to a sweeping rewrite of what’s legal when humans interact with animals.

How The Measure Is Being Sold

The petition’s supporters argue Oregon has “better options than killing animals,” Park said, and the group frames the initiative as removing “exemptions” that allow cruelty.

That messaging is smart, because it uses a word almost everyone agrees with – cruelty  and attaches it to activities people don’t all understand.

But Park’s reporting makes clear the proposal goes far beyond punishing cruelty in the everyday sense. It’s not just about abuse or neglect. It’s about criminalizing the act of injuring or killing animals, period, in large categories of normal behavior.

That kind of broad language is exactly where ballot fights get dangerous. The average voter might picture a guy hurting a dog. Meanwhile, the actual text – as Park summarized it – hits hunting and fishing, livestock agriculture, and pest control, which are not fringe activities in Oregon.

So the persuasion battle becomes less about what’s “good” and more about what the words actually do once they become law.

“We Can Have 100% Of Those Be Crops”

Park interviewed David Michelson, identified as the chief petitioner, and Michelson made the core argument as plainly as you can make it.

He said about 30% of Oregon agricultural sales are animal-related and 70% are crops, and then he added the line that tells you where this is headed: “We can have 100% of those be crops if we wanted to.”

That’s not a small tweak. That’s a full-on vision for reshaping the state’s food economy.

Michelson’s idea, as Park presented it, is that Oregon businesses can shift away from animal agriculture and toward plant agriculture, and even move some farms toward becoming animal sanctuaries.

Park also included Michelson saying there are “alternatives,” and he pointed to the concept of shifting facilities into sanctuary-style operations, suggesting it can be done in Oregon.

Supporters often talk like this shift is just a matter of will. But in real life, you can’t flip a ranch into a sanctuary the way you repaint a building. Land, equipment, labor skills, supply chains, and consumer demand don’t change overnight, and neither do household budgets.

The “we can” argument sounds hopeful, but it can also sound like a plan made by people who don’t have to make payroll.

The Exceptions Sound Small On Purpose

Park explained that the initiative’s only exceptions would be some veterinary practices and self-defense, like if a pest becomes a health risk.

That is an eyebrow-raising carveout, because it implies almost everything else becomes illegal unless it fits into a narrow emergency lane.

Even if you support animal welfare, pest control is not a theoretical issue. It’s rats in a restaurant wall. It’s mice chewing wiring. It’s coyotes targeting livestock. It’s invasive species that wreck habitats.

Park’s reporting suggests this measure wouldn’t just regulate how pests are handled – it could criminalize pest control itself unless it meets that “health risk” framing.

And any law that relies on vague exceptions invites messy enforcement. Who decides what counts as a health risk? How immediate does it have to be? What evidence do you have to show after the fact?

This is where “feel-good” ballot language can create a nightmare for regular people, because the safer option becomes doing nothing, even when doing nothing causes bigger problems.

A Downtown Restaurant’s Warning Shot

Park brought the debate down to street level by talking with a longtime Portland business owner who depends on seafood.

Michelle Wachsmuth, introduced in the report as a fourth-generation owner of Dan & Louis Oyster Bar in Old Town, told Park she’s worried the restaurant is already struggling to stay afloat and relies on every seafood sale it can make.

“If you take all of that away, it would just devastate,” she said, and she didn’t limit the damage to restaurants. She said it would hit grocery stores and farmers too.

That’s the part that often gets lost. Food isn’t just ideology; it’s logistics and local jobs.

Wachsmuth also spoke in practical terms about sustainability, describing efforts to buy sustainable seafood, use wild-caught when possible, and farm-raised oysters. In other words, she’s saying: we’re already trying to meet the ethical concerns people have, so why blow up the whole system?

It’s hard to miss the frustration behind that. Portland’s downtown has been struggling, and when a business owner hears “ban fishing,” they hear “more closures.” They hear fewer tourists, fewer paychecks, fewer reasons for people to come back to Old Town.

Park showed her essentially making a plea: if the city is trying to grow again, taking away major pieces of the food economy is the opposite of help.

Hunters Say It’s Bigger Than A Hobby

Park also included the Oregon Hunters Association pushing back, and he aired their message that hunting is not just culture – it’s food and money.

Todd Adkins, the group’s executive director, told Park this isn’t “tens of millions” at stake, but “hundreds of millions of dollars each year” that contribute to the economy.

Adkins also talked about a “way of life” and feeding families, which isn’t just a slogan in rural parts of Oregon. For many households, hunting is literally meat in the freezer.

Park’s report also raised the funding issue, because hunting and fishing licenses often support conservation and wildlife management.

Michelson acknowledged that eliminating licenses would remove that funding stream, Park said, but he argued there could be an alternative approach – such as a job training fund for people who lose their livelihoods.

That’s an interesting promise, but it also feels like a bandage for a wound the initiative creates. Taking away an entire sector and offering job training after the fact is not the same thing as preserving what already works.

And it assumes the people affected want to leave their work behind, instead of continuing it legally and responsibly.

The Real Story Is The Patchwork Of Consequences

Here’s the uncomfortable truth underneath Park’s reporting: this measure doesn’t just target “cruelty.” It targets entire categories of human activity, and then leaves Oregon to figure out what happens next.

If you criminalize hunting and fishing, what does that do to wildlife management, invasive species control, and rural economies?

If you criminalize animal agriculture, what does that do to local food prices and supply chains?

If you criminalize pest control, what does that do to cities dealing with infestations, property damage, and public health concerns?

You can’t just say “we’ll adapt” and expect that to be painless. Adaptation has a price tag, and it usually lands on regular people first.

Even the word “criminalize” matters. Park didn’t describe this as a regulatory change. He described it as something that would make these actions crimes, which means enforcement, prosecution, and real consequences for behavior that many Oregonians currently see as normal and lawful.

A Ballot Fight Fueled By Emotion

Ballot measures are tough because they operate on emotional fuel.

“Stop cruelty” is emotionally powerful. “Protect traditions” is emotionally powerful too. And Victor Park’s report showed both sides reaching for those buttons.

Michelson is pitching a moral future – less killing, more plant agriculture, more sanctuaries.

Wachsmuth is pitching survival – keeping businesses alive in a downtown already struggling.

Adkins is pitching family and economics – livelihoods, food, conservation funding, and rural life.

My concern, watching the framework Park described, is that broad criminalization measures are blunt instruments. They don’t leave room for nuance, and they don’t handle unintended consequences well.

If Oregon wants better animal welfare, there are targeted ways to do that – stronger cruelty laws, better farming standards, clearer hunting ethics enforcement – without turning the entire relationship between people and animals into a legal minefield.

But ballot initiatives often aren’t built for nuance. They’re built to win.

And if this makes it to November, Park’s report suggests the state is headed for a fight where the slogans will be short, but the consequences could be enormous.