Though so-called Ag-Gag bills have been circulating for several years now, over the weekend a New York Times article really brought the existence of these laws—which specifically criminalize undercover filming or photography on farms, beyond existing trespassing laws—to a much wider audience. Currently seven states have some form of farm protection legislation: Arkansas, California, Indiana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Vermont. North Carolina currently has one proposed—introduced the same day as a Butterball employee pled guilty to animal cruelty—as do roughly a dozen other states. Going back a bit, in 2011 Florida tried to make unauthorized photography of a farm a felony. Meanwhile, Minnesota tried making exposing animal cruelty a crime resulting in a 10 year term in prison, as would have legislation proposed in Iowa. The latest incarnations of these bills have been refined from the earliest legislation. Some common provisions now included in Ag-Gag legislation have been inspired by the ALEC model bills used by oil lobbyists. They would, among other restrictions, have undercover investigators designated as terrorists, and require anyone witnessing abuse to report it within 24 hours. The first part is utterly ridiculous. The second part is no doubt intended to sound like these bills are designed to crack down on animal cruelty, but in reality would prohibit either undercover investigators or whistleblowing farm workers from documenting patterns of abuse on farms, from finding out if a single instance of cruelty is just that, a one-off affair, or something more systemic. It would also, no doubt, limit the scale of prosecutions, both in severity of charge and number of people charged with abuse. Speaking on Democracy Now! this morning, Emily Meredith of the Animal Agriculture Alliance laid out the industry association position: These undercover videos are harmful to the farm owners…the farm families that work those farms day and day out; and the animal agriculture industry, truly, as a whole. These videos damage their reputations. They bring harsh criticisms. These videos often have found no legitimate incidents of abuse. They use manipulated footage. They show false narrative of the images being shown. Theyre meant to shock and awe consumers. Its a complex statement in motivation, but its essentially true—except, strongly, for the part about manipulated footage. (Meredith failed to provide a single example of footage actually being manipulated in any way. And I have to believe that if this was the case, in the course of prosecution, this would have been made a point by the attorneys defending the accused farmers.) The fact of the matter is these videos can be harmful to farm owners. They can be harmful to farm workers—undercover videos at factory farms have resulted in criminal prosecution for animal cruelty. These videos do damage the reputation of the farms shown in the videos, as well as being a strong indictment of current standard industry practices. They do shock viewers. The Animal Agriculture Alliance is entirely correct in saying all these things happen. But they utterly fail to realize that their statement is true because either whats being documented is either illegal, or, perhaps even worse, because whats being shown is, sadly, perfectly legal treatment of farm animals—sentient, feeling, often highly intelligent, living beings. And the average person is deeply moved by such videos, by the disconnect between their idea of how animals are treated on farms and the reality of the situation in the early 21st century. As with the fossil fuel industry, the chemical industry, and much of the fashion industry, modern agribusiness relies on opacity to keep alive the illusion their marketing materials and advertising represents. Transparency in any of these industries is bad for business. At least thats the perception. It exposes the regularity with which oil spills happen, or accidents happen in mining, or what happens after a mountaintop is blown off for coal. It shows you the people earning a pittance to make the shirt you just paid handsomely for. And it shows you how poorly animals are most often treated to provide you food. Absent 24/7/365 livestreaming of farms and slaughterhouses, as Jedediah Purdy suggests in a follow-up to the New York Times story which spawned this piece, and absent actual regulations that cover the entire process of animal agriculture that actually prevent cruelty, undercover investigations are the only time most of us get to peek behind through the windows to see what happens in the food factory.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 12:50:01 +0000