From:
To: City Council
Subject: Measure J
Date: Friday, September 13, 2024 4:10:16 PM
Dear Mayor Rich and City Council members,
Here is a pretty comprehensive picture of my current position on Measure J. As I said in my previous letter to you, you don't need to take any position at all. You don't need to yield to the political pressure that I know you are under. You run the risk of creating a lot of controversy if you take act position as I think Sebastopol especially is pretty divided on this.
You don't need more of that. You can do what Cotati did. They were amazing. They really heard our comments and they responded with courage. I know you are also capable of that.
Thank you.
Open letter to all the Sonoma County organizations and elected officials, including Lynda Hopkins , Chris Rogers , Mike Thompson, David Rabbit, OAEC, CAFF, Sonoma County Conservation Action etc..supporting the no on Measure J campaign.. "There is so much misinformation on measure J deliberately promoted by the you on behalf of the well funded Sonoma County Farm Bureau. I am really shocked! If I'm correct about this, I have a few questions for you.
How can you possibly defend and justify
CAFOs/Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations? Are they part of a sustainable food system to you?
Do you know their record of animal cruelty violations and how much disease they incubate and spread? In many parts of the country, avian flu that has incubated in CAFOs is spreading to dairies and wildlife!
Do you know that the disease rate at Petaluma Poultry is dramatically higher than any other poultry operation in the country?
Do you know that the term CAFO in the measure uses a definition/threshold established by the EPA? And the measure does NOT affect small farms as they are not included? Do you know that the land these CAFOs occupy is zoned agricultural so the zoning can only be changed if the politicians who support no on j approve the change? So the fear that these CAFOs will go out of business and cede their land to development is ridiculous if the elected officials are actually sincere about caring about this. That is questionable to me.
Do you know what the inside of a CAFO is like, with birds crowded together, over 100,000 in a single barn, many of them injured and sick with bacterial infections and infectious zoonotic diseases? That they never experience the sun, grass, the breeze, fresh air, the earth or natural behaviors and that they are more or less juveniles when they are killed? Do you know that there is no actual oversight on the CAFOs and the horrific conditions were well documented and exposed to the public by whistle blowers at great personal expense to them and as a service to us all?
Do you know that if this measure fails, Sonoma County will be subjected to more CAFOs and current CAFOs will expand?
Won't it be wonderful to be just like the Central Valley? Do you know that there will be no food crisis if there are no CAFOs because they produce a huge surplus of products that they ship out of county? Currently enough chickens are "processed" in Petaluma that every citizen of Sonoma county would have to eat TWO whole chickens per day to consume them!
There are over 700 farms in Sonoma County and the measure only applies to 3% of those? Do you know that tremendous amount of suffering that these animals endure in their short, unnatural lives before they are literally and brutally shoved into wire crates and taken to slaughter?
Do you know that Petaluma Poultry slaughters 49,000 chickens. Every. Night? CAFOs are basically abusing animals for profit.
Knowing this now...how can you possibly justify your position? I just don't understand how you can align with the Farm Bureau. I just can't wrap my head around that.
I would think the cruelty alone would solicit an empathetic response and an effort to make a serious change here. Why are you not supporting the change?" Karin Lease
Sebastopol