An Oregon initiative petition drive now gathering signatures seeks to end “unnecessary exemptions to laws governing animal abuse, animal neglect, and animal sexual assault.”

In actuality, the initiative would make artificial insemination a sex crime; virtually end commercial livestock, dairy production and animal slaughter; and criminalize hunting, fishing and pest control.

It is an assault on food production, and on Oregon’s farmers, ranchers and fishermen.

Oregon law provides stiff penalties for people who abuse animals. Those same laws provide fairly conventional and sensible definitions of what constitutes abuse — reckless or intentional neglect or cruelty that causes injury or death.

The statutes also set out exemptions that allow for animal husbandry following accepted practices, regulated slaughter, fishing and hunting, pest control and rodeo events.

We believe that most Oregonians are against animal neglect and abuse, but at the same time don’t object to reasonable meat and dairy production or the harvesting of seafood. That said, we’ve seen a lot of crazy ideas take root as initiative petitions.

Enter Portland animal rights activist David Michelson. Last November he filed Initiative Petition 13 with the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office.

“If enacted, IP13 would remove some of the exemptions to our pre-existing animal cruelty laws that currently allow certain individuals to abuse, neglect, and sexually assault animals without penalty,” according to yesonip13.org.

Mary Anne Cooper, vice president of public policy for the Oregon Farm Bureau, said the result would effectively criminalize everything from slaughtering livestock to basic animal husbandry, including branding and dehorning cattle, castrating bulls and docking horses, sheep and pigs.

The initiative also would re-classify livestock breeding and artificial insemination as sexual assault of an animal — a Class C felony.

Cooper said the petition is the biggest threat to Oregon’s livestock industry in decades.

We agree.

Supporters of the bill are disingenuous in their depictions of the measure’s potential impacts and the current state of animal abuse enforcement.

“As they stand right now, not everyone is held to the same standard when it comes to animal cruelty, and some people are exempt from these laws.”

Farmers and ranchers are not exempt from animal abuse laws. Those who operate outside the accepted norms, or those who neglect their animals, are subject to prosecution.

Yesonip13.org assures voters that nothing in the initiative bans the sale of meat, fur or leather, offering up the most ridiculous business model imaginable.

“After an animal lives a full life, and exits the world naturally and humanely, this initiative does not prohibit a farmer from processing and distributing their body for consumption.”

The public is hardly clamoring for meat from old and sick animals. It is illegal to sell meat from animals that have died a “natural” death.

IP13, though it sounds so reasonable in its description, is ridiculous. No meat, no backyard chickens, no goat milk soap.

But we are forced to take it seriously because, as we said, a lot of ridiculous ideas have become law via the initiative petition process. It must be stopped.