Oregon’s Anti-Hunting & Agriculture Petition is Back – And It’s As Wild As Ever

 

If this headline feels like déjà vu, that’s because it is.

In 2021, Oregon saw a sweeping animal-rights petition aimed at eliminating long-standing legal exemptions for hunting, farming, and animal husbandry. In 2022, nearly the same language resurfaced under a new name; IP 28

We wrote about it back then here >>

Now, in 2026, we’re right back here again and facing another ballot initiative from (assumingly) the same small group of activists pushing the same idea: that lawful hunting and agriculture should be treated as animal cruelty under Oregon law. It is called IP 28.

There’s one critical component to this missing from the jump. Nobody in the hunting or ranching community advocates for animal cruelty. That might not be obvious to the folks not involved in these things, but it’s a good starting point.

What hunters do advocate for is sustainable wildlife management, ethical harvest, and the responsible use of animals for food, which are all values that have shaped conservation, and let’s face it, rural life in North America for over a century.

This petition doesn’t advance animal welfare. It undermines the systems that have protected wildlife better than anywhere else in the world.

This Petition Isn’t About Cruelty, It’s About Criminalizing Use Cases

The petition proposes removing legal exemptions that currently distinguish intentional abuse from lawful, regulated animal use. Those exemptions exist for a reason.

Under this petition, lawful hunting, fishing, and trapping lose explicit protection, let alone, standard livestock practices like castration, dehorning, euthanasia, and transport, are suddenly legally questionable.

The intent may be wrapped in “humane” language, but the outcome is clear: if an animal is harmed or killed for food, it becomes legally suspect.

This kind of petition by a small minority of folks flat out ignores biology, conservation, and the way 98% of U.S. households feed themselves.

Here are some numbers to put to it from the hunting and food perspective. In 2024 alone, Oregon hunters legally harvested around 12,166 elk. Using a conservative average of 200 pounds of usable meat per animal, that’s 2.4 MILLION pounds of food taken directly from the landscape and paid for entirely by hunters through licenses, tags, and conservation funding.

Remove that, and you don’t just “save animals.” You remove millions of pounds of clean, local protein from the food system, and replace it with what…?

Why Hunters Should Care And How We Should Respond

This is the part where it’s either tempting to get angry or just write it off as so far out of left field that it doesn’t deserve attention.

Hunters should care about this petition (IP 28) not because it attacks our identity, but because it gives a chance to share about how we do what we do in a positive light for non-hunters who just like the petition’s headline.

If hunters choose to speak up, and many of us should, the goal isn’t to win an argument. It’s to explain the reality of what we do and how it literally fills our freezers.

Explain that ethical hunting and animal welfare are not opposites. Talk about how conservation requires use of the resource, not just intention. Explain that our food doesn’t come from thin air, it comes from hard work, the land, and being responsible about it.

Most importantly, especially in a state like Oregon (namely the Willamette Valley) where so many people may have lost touch with their food chain, do it in a way that reflects well on our community. The kind of conversation that someone who doesn’t hunt can still understand and walk away from thinking, “Yeah, that makes sense and this petition doesn’t.”

What we need to do! 

If IP 28 gets enough signatures to make it on the ballot then things become really serious. Oregonians need to be proactive now! Contact your legislators and explain to them that you do not support this initiative and demand that they don’t either.