The California Office of the Attorney General received a, shall we say, interesting proposal for an initiative today.
According to documents from the office of the initiative coordinator, a man by the name of Joe Decker paid the required $200 fee and submitted the proposal an initiative called the “Shellfish Suppression Act,” and, you guessed it, it seeks to ban shellfish from the state of California.
The proposal was written up March 31, and Decker promises that he and his cohort are “aggressively working on a funding plan to collect the necessary signatures to bring this measure to the ballot.”
Here are some of the reasons Decker and Co. not only want to ban shellfish, but want to criminalize it:
“a) Shellfish are a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us in Leviticus to suppress. They also smell bad.”
OK, our interest is piqued…
“c) Any person who willingly consumes or sells shellfish is guilty of a felony, and shall be fined $666 thousand per occurrence, and/or imprisoned up to 6 years, 6 months, and 6 days.”
Yeah, we get the whole “666″ devil reference. Thanks.
Will this initiative ever get on the ballot? Probably not, considering the shellfish industry contributed over $23 million to California’s economy in 2010, and the backlash after the much more controversial foie gras ban (which has been lifted).
But, alas, we can let our minds wander and imagine a California with no shellfish, and the sketchy back alley shrimp deals that would go down, the underground king crab parties and the end of bisque as we know it.
Check out the documents for yourself below: