'Ag Gag' Laws Would Punish Whistleblowers, Protect Animal Abusers
Big Agribusiness is trying to keep the public in the dark about the sordid realities of life on the factory "farm" with a gag order preventing filming or photographing animals on farms; would punish whistleblowers and protect animal abusers. On Thursday, A.G. Sulzberger of The New York Times reported on the latest efforts by agribusiness interests and their legislative allies to keep the public in the dark about the realities of factory farming. I wrote recently about the series of bills, introduced in Florida, Iowa, and Minnesota, to make it a crime to take pictures or video of animals on farms. Undercover investigations of the meat industry have a long and important history in the United States. As Sulzberger writes:
“The use of undercover investigations to expose abuse in agriculture dates back more than a century. The journalist Upton Sinclair spent weeks working in meatpacking plants while researching his book ‘The Jungle,’ and his graphic descriptions of unsanitary conditions prompted federal regulation of the industry.”
Sinclair's own investigations led directly to the enactment of the country's first federal slaughterhouse regulations, the Federal Meat Inspection Act, in 1906. Unfortunately, more than a century later, the need for such investigations has only increased.