Protecting the right of investigators to record and photograph egregious acts of cruelty behind the closed doors of factory farms ensures that the truth about factory farming can be seen by both law enforcement and the general public.
Pigs that are being given water by animal rights activists are seen inside
trucks as they arrive to the Farmer John slaughterhouse in the early morning
hours on September 27, 2018, in Vernon, California - Image from David McNew
/ Getty Images
On January 22, 2020, a federal judge struck down the nation’s oldest
“ag-gag” law, the latest in a series of victories against these laws and in
favor of the First Amendment right to seek the truth about how animal
agribusinesses treat the animals in their care. Kansas’s Farm Animal and
Field Crop and Research Facilities Protection Act, passed in 1990,
criminalized a wide range of conduct related to animal facilities, most
importantly, entering an animal facility not open to the public with the
intent to take photographs or recordings.
Across the U.S., many states seeking to conceal the inherent cruelty of
animal agriculture from the general public have passed laws like the Kansas
statute targeting whistleblowers and undercover investigators. These laws,
commonly known as “ag-gag” laws, prevent us from gaining access to and
exposing the widespread cruel (yet standard) treatment of farm animals.
Without these critical undercover investigations, the public would
effectively be kept from learning about the cruelty involved in daily
factory farming practices.
For example, the last investigation at an Iowa pig farm conducted by Animal
Outlook in December 2011 (where I served as a litigation extern) — before
that state passed an “ag-gag” law in early March 2012 — revealed that the
facility routinely castrated and mutilated piglets by cutting off their
tails and genitals without painkillers, resulting in many cases of herniated
intestines. The investigation additionally exposed the facility for letting
countless piglets suffer from injuries and illness. Moreover, when piglets
died, the facility pulled out their intestines and fed them back to other
piglets. These are not isolated incidents; cruelty like this is standard
practice throughout the animal agriculture industry.
A “downer pig” who is about to be stunned and bled to death - Image from Stuart
McDonald
Similar instances of cruelty were uncovered by Animal Outlook at a North
Carolina chicken slaughterhouse in March and April 2015, where our
investigator recorded workers violently throwing, punching and tearing
feathers out of birds, often for their own amusement. Our investigator even
saw birds being buried alive as a method of “disposal.” In 2016, North
Carolina passed an “ag-gag” law in an effort to prevent further
investigations. Without investigators exercising their constitutional right
to record these practices, these acts of egregious cruelty would never have
come to light and consumers would have no way to know the truth of what
occurs in industrial factory farms.
In January’s ruling, the United States District Court for the District of
Kansas struck down most provisions of Kansas’s “ag-gag” law based on First
Amendment grounds. Judge Kathryn Vratil declared that the statute violated
the First Amendment by suppressing speech based on the speaker’s ideology or
viewpoint; in this case, the view that animals should be free from cruelty
and suffering.
This important decision comes on the heels of similar laws being struck down
on First Amendment grounds in other states, including Idaho, Utah and Iowa.
Additional constitutional challenges to “ag-gag” laws are still pending in
courts in Arkansas and North Carolina. In Arkansas, plaintiffs including the
Animal Legal Defense Fund, Animal Equality and the Center for Biological
Diversity are asking the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the
lower court’s dismissal of the lawsuit. In North Carolina, a separate
lawsuit is making its way through the courts, also alleging that the state’s
“ag-gag” law violates the Constitution. Across the country, courts have
consistently recognized that such blatant attempts to conceal the horrors of
industrial factory farming from the American consumer constitute
impermissible and unconstitutional constraints on protected First Amendment
speech.
The decision in Kansas marks another important victory for those of us
concerned with the animal agriculture industry’s treatment of animals.
Protecting the right of investigators to record and photograph egregious
acts of cruelty behind the closed doors of factory farms ensures that the
truth about factory farming can be seen by both law enforcement and the
general public. Such recordings are critical to shining a light on the
industrial food system and encouraging consumers to foster a kinder world
through their daily choices.
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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