This from "Alternet" -- it's laws like these that just do not make sense. -- please follow link to original
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http://www.alternet.org/environment/shocking-reporting-factory-farm-abuses-be-considered-act-terrorism-if-new-laws-pass?paging=off
How do you keep consumers in the dark about the horrors of
factory farms? By making it an “act of terrorism” for anyone to
investigate animal cruelty, food safety or environmental violations on
the corporate-controlled farms that produce the bulk of our meat, eggs
and dairy products.
And who better to write the
Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act,
designed to protect Big Ag and Big Energy, than the lawyers on the
Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force at the corporate-funded
and infamous
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
New
Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska are the latest states to introduce
Ag-Gag laws aimed at preventing employees, journalists or activists from
exposing illegal or unethical practices on factory farms.
Lawmakers
in 10 other states introduced similar bills in 2011-2012. The laws
passed in three of those states: Missouri, Iowa and Utah. But consumer
and animal-welfare activists prevented the laws from passing in Florida,
Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York and Tennessee.
In
all, six states now have Ag-Gag laws, including North Dakota, Montana
and Kansas, all of which passed the laws in 1990-1991, before the term
“Ag-Gag” was coined.
Ag-Gag laws passed 20 years ago were focused
more on deterring people from destroying property, or from either
stealing animals or setting them free. Today’s ALEC-inspired bills take
direct aim at anyone who tries to expose horrific acts of animal
cruelty, dangerous animal-handling practices that might lead to food
safety issues, or blatant disregard for environmental laws designed to
protect waterways from animal waste runoff. In the past, most of those
exposes have resulted from undercover investigations of exactly the type
Big Ag wants to make illegal.
Wyoming’s
HB 0126 is
the perfect example of a direct link between an undercover
investigation of a factory farm and the introduction of an Ag-Gag law.
The bill was introduced mere weeks after nine factory workers at
Wheatland, WY-based Wyoming Premium Farms, a supplier to Tyson Foods,
were charged with animal cruelty following an
undercover investigation
by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). HSUS activists
videotaped workers kicking live piglets, swinging them by their hind
legs and beating and kicking mother pigs. Charges were filed in late
December. In January, State Rep. Sue Wallis and Senator Ogden Driskill
introduced Wyoming’s Ag-Gag bill which would make it a criminal act to
carry out investigations such as the one that exposed the cruelty at
Wyoming Premium Farms.
Wallis and Driskill both have ties to Big
Ag. Wallis was the subject of a conflict-of-interest complaint filed in
2010 by animal welfare groups. The groups accused her of improper and
fraudulent abuse of her position as a legislator after she introduced a
bill allowing the Wyoming Livestock Board to send stray
horses to slaughter.
At the time she introduced the bill, Wallis also was planning to
develop a family-owned horse slaughter plant in the state. Both Wallis
and Driskill are members of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association.
Driskill has accepted
political contributions from the livestock industry and Exxon Mobil, a member of ALEC.
Most
of the Ag-Gag laws introduced since 2011 borrow the premise, if not the
exact language, from model legislation designed by ALEC. ALEC’s sole
purpose is to write model legislation that protects corporate profits.
Industry then pushes state legislators to adapt the bills for their
states and push them through. The idea behind the
Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act
is to make it illegal to “enter an animal or research facility to take
pictures by photograph, video camera, or other or other means with the
intent to commit criminal activities or defame the facility or its
owner.”
In other words, these laws turn journalists and the investigators of crimes into criminals.
Many of the legislators involved in ramming through state Ag-Gag bills have ties to
ALEC,
including Missouri’s Rep. Casey Guernsey. Guernsey’s top donor in 2010
was Smithfield Foods, itself a target of undercover investigations that
exposed widespread abuse of pigs. Of the 60 Iowa
lawmakers who voted for Iowa's Ag-Gag laws, at least 14 of them, or 23%, are members of ALEC
ALEC’s
interest in large-scale factory farm operations, or in industry-speak,
Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), can be traced to one of its
staunchest members, Koch Industries. Koch Industries once owned the
Koch Beef Company, one of the largest cattle feeders in the U.S. When
neighbors of one of the company’s huge cattle-feeding operations opposed
a planned expansion, claiming it would pose health concerns, Koch
persuaded local legislators to rule in its favor. ALEC subsequently
wrote the “
Right to Farm Act,” a
bill to bar lawsuits by citizens claiming that neighboring farms,
including industrial farms, are fouling their air and water.
Ag-Gag bills a threat to animals, public health and the environment
Under
U.S. laws, farm animals don’t get the same protection as other animals,
such as dogs and cats. Anti-free speech Ag-Gag bills only serve to
leave farm animals even more vulnerable to the routine pain and
suffering on factory farms. The three federal statutes that address
animal welfare, including the U.S. Animal Welfare Act, do not apply to
animals raised for food. The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act regulates
animals raised for food, but applies exclusively to slaughterhouses,
where animals may spend only a short time before they are killed. That
leaves the states to regulate the often-barbarous treatment of animals
raised for food.
But as we’ve seen with the Ag-Gag bills, state
laws often are written by big corporations. Nowhere is that more obvious
than in states where cruel methods of treating animals are exempted
from state laws on the basis of their being classified as “customary.”
Who
decides if
a certain practice is “customary” even if most thinking people would
consider that practice cruel? Corporations that own and operate CAFOs in
that state.
Apart from the obvious ethical concerns, Ag-Gag laws
also threaten public health and the environment, and undermine workers’
rights and free speech laws. Undercover investigations at factory farms
have exposed the mishandling of meat, eggs and milk in ways that could
potentially lead to health risks including mad cow disease, salmonella,
e-coli and others. One
investigation
in Chino, Calif., revealed widespread mistreatment of “downed” cows –
cows that are too sick or injured to walk. The facility is the
second-largest supplier of beef to USDA's Commodity Procurement Branch,
which distributes the beef to the National School Lunch Program.
Ag-Gag
bills also keep employees and others from blowing the whistle on
environmental violations. Huge amounts of waste are generated by the
billions of cows, pigs and chickens on factory farms. Much of that
waste, full of antibiotics, growth promoters and synthetic hormones,
finds its way into our waterways and municipal water supplies. State and
federal laws require CAFOs to minimize their environmental damage, but
the laws are often not enforced. One of the ways to expose violations is
through undercover investigations.
And then there’s the matter of
free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union has been an outspoken
opponent of Ag-Gag bills. In a
letter
opposing the proposed Ag-Gag law in New Hampshire, the executive
director of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union wrote that the
proposed law “has serious implications for two fundamental rights
protected by the U.S. and New Hampshire constitutions: the right to
freedom of expression and the right against self-incrimination.”
There’s still time to stop Ag-Gag laws in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska
The majority of Americans see Ag-Gag laws for what they are: just another attack on consumers’ right to know. According to a
poll conducted
last year by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals (ASPCA), 71% of Americans oppose the laws. When consumers learn
that 99% of the animals raised for food are raised in factory farms,
they generally agree that lawmakers should focus on strengthening animal
cruelty laws, not prosecuting the whistleblowers.
It was public
outrage that killed proposed bills in seven states last year. Here are
the three latest bills to be introduced, and links to petitions telling
lawmakers in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska to reject the proposed
laws:
New Hampshire: HB110
Primary
sponsor: Bob Haefner (R) ; Co-sponsors: Majority Leader Steve Shurtleff
(D), Rep. Tara Sad (D), Senator Sharon Carson (R), and Bob Odell (R)
This
is a 7-line bill written to look as if its main concern is the
protection of animals. However the bill would require whistleblowers to
report animal abuse and turn over videotapes, photographs and documents
within 24 hours or face prosecution – a clear attempt to intimidate and
deter people from conducting undercover investigations. Lawmakers know
that in order for anyone to prove a pattern of abuse in factory farms,
they must document repeated instances of cruelty. A video or photograph
of only one instance will be dismissed as a one-time anomaly, which will
get the agribusiness company off the hook.
Sign the
petition to stop New Hampshire's Ag-Gag bill.
Wyoming: HB0126
Co-sponsors: Rep. Sue Wallis (R), Sen. Ogden Driskill (R)
Introduced within weeks after nine workers at a Wyoming factory farm were
charged with abuse.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Sue Wallis, is planning to build horse
slaughterhouses in Wyoming and other states. If this bill had been law
in 2012, it would have prevented activists from exposing horrific acts
of cruelty at Wheatland, WY-based Wyoming Premium Farms, a supplier to
Tyson Foods.
Sign the
petition to stop Wyoming's Ag-Gag bill.
Nebraska: LB 204http://openstates.org/ne/bills/103/LB204/
Introduced by Sen. Tyson Larson (R), Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh (R), and Sen. Ken Schilz (R)
The
bill would make it a Class IV felony for any person to obtain
employment at an animal facility with the broadly defined "intent to
disrupt the normal operations," It would require animal abuse reports to
be filed within 12 hours. Co-sponsor Sen. Launtenbaugh has advocated in
the past for horse slaughtering.
