(CN) — Maine has become the first state to recognize a constitutional right that allowes individuals to grow, harvest and eat the foods of their choice.
While communities across the nation headed to the polls this year to cast ballots in local races, filling seats on town councils and boards of education, voters in Maine supported amending their state constitution and rejected an electrical transmission line project that would alter how New England receives energy.
With 53% of the precincts reporting their results Tuesday evening, a little more than 60% of voters supported recognizing a right to food, according to the Bangor Daily News.
The right to food amendment enumerates a right for Mainers to grow, raise and consume food that they choose themselves. While a right to food has been recognized in some places internationally, Maine was the first in the United States to consider the issue.
Representative Billy Bob Faulkingham, a Republican lawmaker who sponsored the resolution in the legislature, said in a statement emailed early Wednesday morning the glory of the amendment’s passage belonged to his Lord and savior and to the grassroot supporters who advocated for it.
Ending his statement by quoting the Maine motto, Latin for “I direct,” Faulkingham said Mainers picked liberty and headed off the efforts of Washington lobbyists.
“Our country and our legislature seem more divided than ever, but the Right to Food was the issue that brought Democrats and Republicans together,” Faulkingham said. “Maine People love their freedom and their self-sufficiency — and to them it’s not political.”
Julie Smith, executive director of the Maine Farm Bureau Association, said in an email that the state’s voters spoke and supported a right to food and a policy of food sovereignty. In the weeks leading up to the election, the bureau had voiced concern over how the amendment was worded.
“Maine Farm Bureau is prepared to support Maine farmers as this amendment is enacted and, as always, stands clear in its resolve to protect and embrace food safety and animal welfare as a standard for all Mainers,” Smith wrote.
Lawmakers who pushed for the resolution in the Maine legislature pointed to court cases over individuals who sold raw milk as part of their reasoning for why the amendment was needed.
For instance, Craig Hickman, a Democrat representative at the time, testified before the legislature and pointed to a 2010 brief the Food and Drug Administration filed in a federal case in Iowa over raw milk that argued Americans have no fundamental right to food of their choosing.
Proponents said the amendment is preventative, and codifies a right for Mainers to, say, save and share seed.
But groups who oppose the amendment — including animal rights activists and the Maine Farm Bureau Association — say the language of the amendment presented to voters was so broad that it could erase food safety regulations, hunting and fishing laws and statutes designed to prevent animal mistreatment.
Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, wrote in an email that the coalition that formed a political action committee probably did not spend enough resources or communicate with enough urgency to defeat the measure.
“Question 3 had surface appeal for voters,” Pacelle wrote. “The problem is, its effect probably will not align with the intentions of its proponents.”
Meanwhile, the question that generated millions of dollars in campaign spending was a citizen’s initiative that dealt the construction of electric transmission lines. Specifically, it asked voters if they supported a ban on transmission lines running longer than 50 miles in a region in western Maine and required the Maine legislature approve such projects by a two-thirds margin. The voters said they did.
The resolution also applied retroactively, calling on the legislature to vote on any projects that used public land beginning in 2014.
The question arose because of a project intended to transmit electricity generated from Canadian hydropower dams to residents in Massachusetts. The project says the power lines would be New England’s largest investment of renewable energy, flooding the region with low-cost energy.
But the project has to cut through 53 miles of Maine woods.
It has sparked controversy as it was approved by the Trump administration. When the Sierra Club challenged the project in court, the First Circuit concluded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ environmental impact statement of the transmission line was sufficient.
Advocates for the question’s approval said the move gives the legislature the ability to oversee those kinds of projects and would help preserve the untouched wilderness home to moose and loon.
But critics of the move, such as Richard Anderson, a former commissioner of Maine’s Department of Conservation, said the question took the decision to approve transmission lines from a process that gathered facts, weighed input from interested parties and involved the Public Utilities Commission and instead placed it in the hands of the partisan political legislature.
Furthermore, other critics worried about the question applying retroactively.
Pete Didisheim, advocacy director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said in a statement released shortly after the election was called that voters spoke in a landslide of opposition to the project, despite Central Maine Power and Hydro-Quebec spending $72 million to advocate for it.
Didisheim said the ongoing construction of the transmission line should stop, in accordance with the will of the voters, either voluntarily or though the Department of Environmental protection suspending the project’s permit.
“We also call on Massachusetts to honor this electoral outcome by selecting an alternative option for meeting its climate goals without imposing significant environmental harm on another New England state,” Didisheim said.
Meanwhile, the political committee of Central Maine Power, Clean Energy Matters, said in a statement the results of the referendum would not be the last word on the transmission line project, saying it believed it was unconstitutional.
"With over 400 Maine jobs and our ability to meet our climate goals on the line, this fight will continue," the statement said.
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