05/30/2026
“Let’s talk about Oregon Initiative Petition 28. The PEACE Act. And let’s start with the number that should terrify every hunter, every angler, every rancher, and every family that puts food on the table the hard way.
120,000.
That is how many people in Oregon signed a petition to make it a crime to go fishing. To hunt a deer. To run your cattle. To set a mousetrap. One hundred and twenty thousand Oregonians looked at that clipboard and said yes. Let’s do this.
And here’s where it gets worse. A significant chunk of those 120,000 had no idea what they were actually signing. Because the people pushing this thing were not exactly forthcoming. They were not walking up to folks saying hey, want to make fishing illegal? They were selling it as animal protection. Which sounds great. Until you find out that protection includes the fish on the end of your line. The deer in your scope. The cow in your pasture. The rat in your wall.
You were deceived. And if you signed this thing without knowing that, you need to understand what you actually put your name on.
Initiative Petition 28 would strip the legal exemptions that have always separated animal cruelty from lawful, legal, time-honored activity. Hunting becomes a crime. Fishing becomes a crime. Trapping becomes a crime. Raising and slaughtering livestock becomes a crime. Pest control becomes a crime. Even artificial insemination of dairy cattle gets reclassified as sexual assault of an animal under this measure.
This is not hyperbole. This is the actual text of the petition.
Now let’s talk about what this does to Oregon’s economy. Because this is not just a cultural fight. This is a survival fight. Oregon’s animal agriculture sector alone generates more than 4 billion dollars in economic output every single year and employs more than 30,000 people. That is 30,000 families. That is 30,000 paychecks. Gone. Because somebody in Portland decided your way of life is a crime.
And that is not even counting what it does to fishing. To the commercial fleet. To the sport fishing industry. To the coastal communities like ours that depend on those boats leaving the dock every morning.
Here is the part that should make you the angriest. The people behind this measure have already admitted on their own website that they do not expect it to win in 2026. Their words. Not mine. They said it may take quite some time before a majority of Oregonians are ready to stop killing animals. They are playing the long game. They are building a record. They are using your ballot, your state, your way of life as a laboratory for a radical ideology funded largely from out of state.
So yes. 120,000 signatures got this thing to the November ballot. Some of those people knew exactly what they were doing. And some of them were lied to at the door.
Either way, the rest of us need to wake up. Because if this passes someday, there is no version of coastal Oregon that looks anything like what we know. The boats stop. The rifles go silent. The ranches close. And 4 billion dollars and 30,000 jobs walk right out the door.
And, what if Portland, Salem and Eugene back it? Exactly. They just might.”
CTTC✏️
