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What Counts As Animal Cruelty? Why IP28 Gets It Wrong

IP28 treats lawful, humane, regulated care as "cruelty." Here's what that would really mean for Oregon.

Oregon currently has some of the strongest animal protection laws in the country. Abuse, neglect, and torture are crimes here, and they are prosecuted as such. So when a ballot measure promises to eliminate “animal cruelty exemptions,” it is worth asking what those exemptions actually do, because the answer is not what the measure’s name suggests.

This November, Oregon voters may be asked to decide on Initiative Petition 28 (IP28), branded by its sponsors as the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions (PEACE) Act. It has submitted more than enough raw signatures to qualify for the 2026 ballot, though those signatures still need state verification (Oregon Elections Division, 2026). The measure’s central claim is that Oregon’s cruelty statutes are full of loopholes that let cruelty go unpunished.

That claim is false.

The exemptions IP28 targets do not permit cruelty. Those exemptions are the lines in the law that separate criminal cruelty from lawful, humane, and tightly regulated care: medical research, teaching, and veterinary medicine; family farms and backyard chickens; everyday pest control; and tribal fishing and hunting.

IP28 does not strengthen Oregon’s cruelty laws; it removes these exemptions and puts a single broad definition in their place, so that regulated, humane activity gets treated as abuse. The only exceptions in IP28 are for self-defense and veterinary practice, and even those are only vaguely defined (Oregon Secretary of State, 2026).

The Misinformation: How IP28 Redefines Cruelty

The activities IP28 targets are lawful, regulated, and reviewed to keep animals safe. This measure muddies that distinction on purpose. By treating humane husbandry, veterinary care, and federally overseen research as “cruelty exemptions,” it implies that the activities themselves are cruel.

They are not.

Medical Research Is Among The Most Regulated Work In The Country

Oregon’s cruelty statutes currently exempt “lawful scientific or agricultural research or teaching that involves the use of animals” (ORS 167.335(1)(i)), and IP28 strikes that exemption entirely (Oregon Secretary of State, 2026). If eliminated, the federally regulated and ethically reviewed research conducted at institutions like Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) could be recast as criminal animal abuse.

That framing gets the facts backward. This research is already among the most closely overseen work in the country, governed by the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA), reviewed in advance by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC), and guided by the 3Rs framework of Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement. Humane care is the legal and ethical baseline that the whole system is built to enforce. IP28 does not reform that oversight. Instead, it removes the legal ground the work stands on and treats it as a crime.

Oregonians have a direct stake in that work, too. Primate research at ONPRC has driven progress toward an HIV cure and produced a vaccine platform now in human trials. It also helped develop antibodies that can protect newborns from HIV (OHSU News, 2020, 2021, 2023). Criminalizing this work would not help a single animal in these well-regulated programs. It would only push the research and the jobs that come with it out of Oregon and, potentially, out of the country.

Teaching And Veterinary Care Would Be Swept In

IP28 does not stop at Portland. It deletes the exemption for teaching and agricultural research, not just biomedical work, which lands it squarely on Oregon State University (OSU), the state’s land-grant institution in Corvallis. In the College of Agricultural Sciences, students learn and conduct research with teaching herds, a campus dairy, and a meat science center. Coursework includes routine breeding techniques such as artificial insemination and embryo transfer (Oregon State University, n.d.-a). Under IP28, the husbandry this instruction depends on would lose its exemption, and the measure’s expanded definition of “animal sexual assault” would appear to reach the very breeding methods OSU teaches.

Oregon’s only veterinary college would feel it too. IP28 sweeps away the broad protections for working with animals and leaves a single, vaguely worded exemption for “good veterinary practice.” The word “good” is never defined, and the exemption traces back to a statute about treating a sick or injured animal (ORS 686.030), leaving veterinarians, students, and researchers with no clear line to stand behind. Even a routine spay or neuter is surgery on a healthy animal rather than treatment for an illness, so the procedure may not qualify; the same applies to procedures used in research and teaching. Whether any given act counts as “good” enough to escape prosecution would be left to prosecutors and courts to decide after the fact. On top of that, the Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine’s animal-based research and graduate training, funded by agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), would lose its exemption outright (Oregon State University, n.d.-b).

Tribal Treaty Rights Would Be Criminalized

IP28 places the same false equation on Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes. The measure contains no exemption for their treaty-protected hunting and fishing rights (Outdoor Life, 2026). Those rights are secured by federal treaties and affirmed by the courts, and many predate Oregon’s statehood.

Bipartisan state senators leading the Oregon Sportsmen’s Legislative Caucus have warned that the measure would not spare even ceremonial fishing and hunting (Northwest Sportsman, 2026). For tribal communities, these practices are not recreation. They are food sovereignty, ceremony, and a connection between generations. Treating these first-foods traditions as animal cruelty bears no new evidence of harm. It just applies IP28’s overbroad definition to practices that have sustained Indigenous communities for generations.

The measure does name the tribes, but not in an effort to protect them. IP28 dismisses treaty rights and would seat a representative from each of the nine tribal governments on a state “Transitional Oversight Council” charged with managing the termination of the very practices it criminalizes (Oregon Secretary of State, 2026). Asking tribes to help administer the end of their own traditions, without their consent and without a carve-out for their rights, is not animal welfare.

Routine Farming Practices Would Become Crimes

Oregon is home to roughly 37,000 farms and ranches (The Spectator, 2026). IP28 removes the exemption for accepted animal husbandry, which means routine practices such as castration, dehorning, and tail docking could be prosecuted as cruelty. Raising animals for food could itself be treated as abuse, and the measure’s language would even reclassify the veterinary artificial insemination used in ordinary breeding as “sexual assault of an animal” (Oregon Secretary of State, 2026). The measure draws no line between a commercial operation and a household one, so even keeping a few backyard chickens for eggs, a common sight across Oregon in both rural and suburban areas, would lose the protection that ordinary husbandry has today. None of this is the cruelty the measure’s name invokes.

  • Local food access: Oregon-raised lamb, pork, beef, eggs, and dairy at farmers’ markets and grocers would be in jeopardy, along with commercial fishing and crabbing up and down the coast.
  • Conservation funding: Oregon’s wildlife programs are paid for mostly through hunting and fishing license revenue, and the state’s General Fund covers only about ten percent of the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s budget (OutKick, 2026). Ending hunting and fishing would defund the very conservation IP28 claims to value. Regulated hunting and fishing are also tools for managing wildlife populations, and ending them would make those populations harder to keep in balance (Oregon Hunters Association, 2026).
  • Jobs and the broader economy: Hunting and fishing alone generate an estimated $1.9 billion in annual economic activity for Oregon communities, supporting guides, outfitters, processors, and rural businesses (Oregon Hunters Association, 2026).

The Oregon Farm Bureau has called IP28 “an extreme, overly broad measure” that would criminalize normal, humane, and necessary activities (OutKick, 2026).

Pest Control Protects Public Health

Controlling rats, mice, and other vermin is a basic matter of public health and safety. Rodents can contaminate food, damage property, and spread disease, which is why homes, restaurants, schools, hospitals, and farms all depend on pest control. Oregon’s cruelty statutes currently exempt this work, and IP28 removes that exemption (Oregon Secretary of State, 2026). If passed into law, the lethal methods used to clear an infestation would lose their protection, so a routine and necessary public health practice could be charged as criminal animal abuse. The measure leaves no barrier in place to keep pests out of the spaces where people live, eat, learn, and receive care.

Why A Broad Coalition Opposes IP28

Researchers, tribal nations, farmers, hunters, veterinarians, and bipartisan lawmakers don’t often agree on ballot measures. But IP28 has brought them together because they recognize the same flaw: the measure does not target actual cruelty.

Protecting animals and supporting responsible, regulated animal care are not in conflict. Oregon can and does punish real animal cruelty without criminalizing medical research, animal care, and agriculture education, tribal heritage, and the people who grow our food. IP28 would punish the wrong people for activities that were never cruel to begin with, and its reach is wide enough that almost everyone who lives or works in Oregon would feel it.

Learn More and Take Action

The most important steps are to get informed, register to vote, and talk with your neighbors before November. And if a petitioner approaches you, you are free to decline to sign. Read the full text of the measure for yourself at the Oregon Secretary of State’s office, and explore more of savescienceoregon.org to learn how animal research is regulated and why it matters for Oregon families.

If this post was helpful, share it with a friend or colleague so more Oregonians understand what IP28 would really do.

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