Missouri Voters: NO on Amendment 1

This coming Tuesday, Missouri residents will be voting on Amendment 1.  If passed, Amendment 1 (to the Missouri Constitution) will permanently invalidate every law protecting animal rights, the environment or consumers' safety.  Amendment 1 is being financed and promoted by Missouri Farmers Care, a grass-rootsy sounding front group for out-of-state agribusiness and commodities trading interests.  Their profits could be even higher if it weren't for those pesky anti-cruelty laws regulating factory farms and puppy mills.

Knowing that the general public isn't all warm and fuzzy over the profits of large industrial farming operations, the proponents of Amendment 1 are promoting it as a “right to farm” bill.  If Amendment 1 is a “right to farm” bill, the Ku Klux Klan isn't racist; they're just extremely proud of their own ethnic heritage.

Most farmers — the ones who aren't running huge industrial operations — and most Missouri newspapers are against Amendment 1.  In addition to factory farms and puppy mills, Amendment 1 will also protect the rights of deer “farmers” to keep offering those canned “hunts” for castrated “sportsmen.”

Some of the financing for Amendment 1 has come from illegal contributions.  Big Ag and commodities interests have been using funds that they are legally allowed to spend only on promoting their products, not lobbying for or against legislation.  A member of the HSUS Missouri Agriculture Council said:

“There simply is no way this adds up.  The organizations working for the corporate interests based in New York and Beijing will apparently stoop to any low to push the Missouri family farmer off the land. They need to be held accountable to us as Missouri family farmers who pay this type of federal tax on every pig sold. We deserve to know if they have illegally used our own money to lobby against the interests of family farmers.”

And speaking of corporate sleaze, another large contributor to Amendment 1 is  Forrest Lucas, a multi-millionaire from Indiana.  His mission in life is to spend his inherited millions fighting every proposed anti-animal-cruelty law he can find.  Somewhere in a parallel universe, Forrest Lucas is confined to a cage just slightly bigger than he is.  When he's finally released and barely able to stagger out, he'll be shot by a “hunter.”