by Tracy R. Walsh
Andrew Cohen applauds the coalition of animal rights groups, civil liberties organizations, and media groups challenging Idaho’s three-week-old “ag-gag” bill:
The statute creates the crime of “interference with agricultural production” by punishing anyone who makes an unauthorized “audio or video recordings” of what transpires inside food processing facilities in Idaho with up to one year in prison. It is designed, as its lengthy legislative record suggests, to help Big Ag prevent the public dissemination of images of animal abuse or unsafe conditions. Images like those posted in April 2011 as part of an award-winning investigation into the state’s dairy industry by the Boise Weekly. Or the video of farm workers in Idaho kicking and stomping on cows that the Boise Weekly posted in October 2012. It was this investigative work that caused one concerned lawmaker to lament recently not the cruelty, or unclean food, but the injustice of these farm operators being “tried and convicted in the press or on YouTube.”
Ken Paulson of the First Amendment Center weighs in:
There is a certain redundancy to all the ag-gag bills. They invariably try to limit investigative work by criminalizing things that already are criminal. … You violate the law if you enter a farm by “force, threat, misrepresentation or trespass.” Each and every one of those is already prohibited by multiple statutes. If you were trying to eliminate coercion and fraud and trespass, you would not need to pass this bill. If you were trying to limit the scrutiny of the agriculture industry, you would need to pass this bill.
It is not only constitutionally suspect, it’s terrible public policy on the part of the legislature. Give me the very best argument for why this needs to be in place and then tell me why you wouldn’t then pass similar legislation for day-care centers. Would anyone suggest that you would send someone to prison for documenting child abuse? Is there anyone who is going to run on that platform?
Katie Valentine argues such laws have already had a chilling effect elsewhere:
In the six other states that have ag gag laws on the books, activists and journalists have said they’ve stopped attempting to document abuse on farm operations for fear of prosecution. This chilling effect means that the public in these states has little chance of seeing footage that can expose cruel and dangerous practices on agricultural operations and lead to major change in the agriculture industry. In 2008, for instance, an undercover video exposed “downer” cows, which can’t stand on their own and are sometimes diseased, being used for beef. The video led to the largest meat recall in US history and prompted the US to ban the use of downer cows for meat.
The Dish 