Proposition B, approved by Missouri voters on November 2, limits the number of breeding animals a kennel owner can own. Nursing home operators face no such limits on their number of residents, which may say something about how Missourians view dogs vs. grandma. Or maybe, more importantly, it may say something about how people in urban areas view their rural neighbors.
Proposition B, sold as a means to end "puppy mills," will put most of the legitimate kennels in Missouri out of business. Most of those kennels are in rural areas, where prop B went down to a resounding defeat, losing by around a 60-40 margin.
The cities of St. Louis and Kansas City approved the initiative by huge margins, propelling the ballot proposal to a 51-49 victory statewide.
As is typical in Missouri elections, the rural-urban split is alive and well.
Opponents of the initiative, including dog breeders, Missouri Farm Bureau, and other farm groups, can take a great deal of pride in their efforts. Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS), the author of the initiative, has been extraordinary successful at whuppin up on farmers, outlawing modern pork production in Arizona with a 65% affirmative vote and slaughtering the chicken business in California with 63% of the vote.
We Missourians at least made it close. They didn't even need an election to change Ohio agriculture.
HSUS outspent its opponents in Missouri by 30 to 1. As disappointing as the defeat may be, it is nothing short of a miracle that it was as close as it was.
Too little too late
We were too late starting our campaign, and we had too little money to wage a campaign. We had no money for TV, and no way to counter the robo calls that seemingly reached every voter in the state.
I never watched the Golden Girls, but Betty White still called me, urging me to vote for Prop B. So did Tony LaRussa, the manager of my beloved Cardinals. Aging actresses and experts on the hit and run are now setting ag policy in Missouri. Ain't democracy grand?
HSUS has made no provision for the dogs that will have to be destroyed by larger breeders. The organization will soon have the blood of thousands of excess dogs on its hands. The famous puppy mills that started all of this are already illegal, and will remain in business, continuing just as they did before. Good, conscientious breeders will move to other states, costing Missouri jobs. HSUS has made a point, but they haven't made a difference.
Starving puppies looking mournfully at the camera pack an emotional punch that we haven't figured out how to answer.
HSUS will be back to Missouri, and livestock farming will be their next target. We've got to start earlier, and raise more money, work together better, and make the moral case for the way we farm now.
HSUS is a national organization, yet we insist on allowing them to pick us off state by state.
Earlier this fall, I listened to a dog breeder from Southwest Missouri talk about his combination dog breeding and cattle operation. He had started the business as a way of providing work for his disabled grandson, and he described how the young man had grown in the business of caring for their animals. Tears came to his eyes as he worried about which dogs he would have to destroy if Proposition B passed.
If I would have had a camera, and the money to buy advertisements, we would have beaten Proposition B right there.