Ag-Gag Laws
Bronx Bombers
Posts: 2,208
Legislators in six more states are seeking to ban or limit the use of undercover camera investigations by animal rights groups that expose animal cruelty on farms.
"We have law enforcement and regulatory agencies to handle those kinds of situations," said Indiana state Sen. Travis Holdman, who authored such a bill in Indiana that passed the state Senate in February.
"We don't need a vigilante group out there with cameras and video cameras taking pictures of things that we just don't like."
Since the first of the year, legislation that would ban or restrict the undercover taping on farms has been introduced in nine states and remains active in six of those: Nebraska, Indiana, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and California. Hearings on the bills were held this week in three of those states.
Should it pass the state House, the Indiana law would make it illegal to take photos or video at an agricultural facility without the consent of the owner. The bill had its first reading in the state House of Representatives this week.
In Arkansas, pending legislation would make it a crime for anyone other than law enforcement personnel to investigate or collect evidence of animal cruelty.
The laws come in the wake of a series of undercover camera exposes that have led to a public outrage and calls for reform on large-scale, so-called "factory farms."
Last year ABC News reported that Mercy for Animals, which has shot undercover footage at chicken, turkey, pig and dairy farms around the country, had joined with 26 other groups, including the ASPCA and the Humane Society of the U.S., to oppose such laws. A statement from the coalition called the "ag gag" bills "a wholesale assault on many fundamental values" and a threat to health, safety and freedom of the press.
"This flawed and misdirected legislation," Nathan Runkle, executive director of Mercy for Animals said then, "could set a dangerous precedent.
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=18738108
This is the true story of how the meat industry is manipulating our legislative process so that it can continue to abuse animals and workers while jeopardizing public health and our environment.
The story begins in 2008 with the nation's largest meat recall: The United States Department of Agriculture recalled 143 million pounds of potentially diseased and dangerous meat after an investigator from The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) revealed systemic violations of the Federal Meat Inspection Act at Hallmark/Westland, the second-largest National School Lunch Program beef supplier. Day after day, the plant had been shipping meat to our nation's schools from animals too sick and diseased even to walk, thereby putting our children at great risk for exposure to foodborne pathogens and other diseases and illnesses, including Mad Cow Disease.
To force diseased and disabled animals to walk, workers were "ramming cows with the blades of a forklift, jabbing them in the eyes, applying painful electrical shocks to sensitive areas, dragging them with chains pulled by heavy machinery, and torturing them with a high-pressure water hose to simulate drowning as they attempted to force these animals to walk to slaughter," according to HSUS President and CEO Wayne Pacelle. Not only was this cruel, it also represented a violation of state and federal laws. Remarkably, just a few years before the HSUS investigation, the Hallmark/Westland plant in question had been honored as a USDA "supplier of the year."
The Humane Society and federal government sued Hallmark for endangering the health of our nation's school kids in violation of signed contracts. The case concluded last November when the plant's owners agreed to a mostly symbolic (the company was already bankrupt) $500 million settlement. This investigation was just one in a long line of undercover probes by animal protection organizations.
Every year, we see more of these investigations; sadly, every investigation finds new and horrific abuses of animals in violation of federal and state laws, often while on-site government inspectors look the other way.
Responsible or savvy industries would answer this overwhelming evidence of flagrant and endemic law-breaking with a serious commitment to change their behavior. They would reform their practices to eliminate the culture of cruelty that seems to infest industrial farms and slaughterhouses. They would, as USDA consultant and slaughterhouse expert Dr. Temple Grandin has suggested, install video cameras to monitor for animal abuse and food safety problems, and they would hire independent inspectors to review the video and make sure that there was no gratuitous abuse and that dangerous meat was not being sold.
Incredibly, instead of working to prevent the abuse, the meat industry is now vigorously pushing laws to prevent people from finding out about it -- to make criminals not out of the animal abusers or those who foist dangerous meat onto school-children, but out of undercover investigators. That's right: The industry's response to years of evidence of egregious, and often criminal, animal cruelty and of diseased and adulterated meat entering the market is to attempt to outlaw undercover investigations. In 2011, the meat industry backed laws in four states to make taking photos or videos on farms and slaughterhouses illegal. In 2012, the industry pushed similar laws in 10 states. This year, we expect even more.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb ... 59769.html
http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/N ... Winner.pdf
Any legislation that censors what the public is able to see is an indictment of the secrecy in which the industry clearly prefers to operate. It begs the question— What exactly are they trying to hide?
"We have law enforcement and regulatory agencies to handle those kinds of situations," said Indiana state Sen. Travis Holdman, who authored such a bill in Indiana that passed the state Senate in February.
"We don't need a vigilante group out there with cameras and video cameras taking pictures of things that we just don't like."
Since the first of the year, legislation that would ban or restrict the undercover taping on farms has been introduced in nine states and remains active in six of those: Nebraska, Indiana, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and California. Hearings on the bills were held this week in three of those states.
Should it pass the state House, the Indiana law would make it illegal to take photos or video at an agricultural facility without the consent of the owner. The bill had its first reading in the state House of Representatives this week.
In Arkansas, pending legislation would make it a crime for anyone other than law enforcement personnel to investigate or collect evidence of animal cruelty.
The laws come in the wake of a series of undercover camera exposes that have led to a public outrage and calls for reform on large-scale, so-called "factory farms."
Last year ABC News reported that Mercy for Animals, which has shot undercover footage at chicken, turkey, pig and dairy farms around the country, had joined with 26 other groups, including the ASPCA and the Humane Society of the U.S., to oppose such laws. A statement from the coalition called the "ag gag" bills "a wholesale assault on many fundamental values" and a threat to health, safety and freedom of the press.
"This flawed and misdirected legislation," Nathan Runkle, executive director of Mercy for Animals said then, "could set a dangerous precedent.
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=18738108
This is the true story of how the meat industry is manipulating our legislative process so that it can continue to abuse animals and workers while jeopardizing public health and our environment.
The story begins in 2008 with the nation's largest meat recall: The United States Department of Agriculture recalled 143 million pounds of potentially diseased and dangerous meat after an investigator from The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) revealed systemic violations of the Federal Meat Inspection Act at Hallmark/Westland, the second-largest National School Lunch Program beef supplier. Day after day, the plant had been shipping meat to our nation's schools from animals too sick and diseased even to walk, thereby putting our children at great risk for exposure to foodborne pathogens and other diseases and illnesses, including Mad Cow Disease.
To force diseased and disabled animals to walk, workers were "ramming cows with the blades of a forklift, jabbing them in the eyes, applying painful electrical shocks to sensitive areas, dragging them with chains pulled by heavy machinery, and torturing them with a high-pressure water hose to simulate drowning as they attempted to force these animals to walk to slaughter," according to HSUS President and CEO Wayne Pacelle. Not only was this cruel, it also represented a violation of state and federal laws. Remarkably, just a few years before the HSUS investigation, the Hallmark/Westland plant in question had been honored as a USDA "supplier of the year."
The Humane Society and federal government sued Hallmark for endangering the health of our nation's school kids in violation of signed contracts. The case concluded last November when the plant's owners agreed to a mostly symbolic (the company was already bankrupt) $500 million settlement. This investigation was just one in a long line of undercover probes by animal protection organizations.
Every year, we see more of these investigations; sadly, every investigation finds new and horrific abuses of animals in violation of federal and state laws, often while on-site government inspectors look the other way.
Responsible or savvy industries would answer this overwhelming evidence of flagrant and endemic law-breaking with a serious commitment to change their behavior. They would reform their practices to eliminate the culture of cruelty that seems to infest industrial farms and slaughterhouses. They would, as USDA consultant and slaughterhouse expert Dr. Temple Grandin has suggested, install video cameras to monitor for animal abuse and food safety problems, and they would hire independent inspectors to review the video and make sure that there was no gratuitous abuse and that dangerous meat was not being sold.
Incredibly, instead of working to prevent the abuse, the meat industry is now vigorously pushing laws to prevent people from finding out about it -- to make criminals not out of the animal abusers or those who foist dangerous meat onto school-children, but out of undercover investigators. That's right: The industry's response to years of evidence of egregious, and often criminal, animal cruelty and of diseased and adulterated meat entering the market is to attempt to outlaw undercover investigations. In 2011, the meat industry backed laws in four states to make taking photos or videos on farms and slaughterhouses illegal. In 2012, the industry pushed similar laws in 10 states. This year, we expect even more.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb ... 59769.html
http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/N ... Winner.pdf
Any legislation that censors what the public is able to see is an indictment of the secrecy in which the industry clearly prefers to operate. It begs the question— What exactly are they trying to hide?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
(so it rhymed -- I couldn't help myself).
A more demanding public of ethical treatment (kinda an oxymoron of sorts as these animals are raised for slaughter anyway) would encourage slaughter facilities to provide us proof that they exceed minimum standards. That's healthy consumerism at work. Kosher & organic products are becoming more affordable largely because awareness is increasing. These are the measures we can, and are -- taking. Also, more people are buying from more trusted, local markets. Industrial facilities would feel the heat on this almost overnight if we simply quit buying superstore brands for even a few weeks. THEY need to police themselves or THEY need to fold. But, it is US -- who must demand such.
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
Waste Pollution and the Environment
(1) The USDA reports that animals in the US meat industry produce 61 million tons of waste each year, which is 130 times the volume of human waste - or five tons for every US citizen.
(2) North Carolina's 7,000,000 factory-raised hogs create four times as much waste - stored in reeking, open cesspools - as the state's 6.5 million people. The Delmarva Peninsula's 600 million chickens produce 400,000 tons
of manure a year.
(3) According to the Environmental Protection Agency, hog, chicken and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states.
(4) Pfiesteria, a microscopic organism that feeds off the phosphorus and nitrogen found in manure, is a lethal toxin harmful to both humans and fish. In 1991 alone, 1,000,000,000,000 (one billion) fish were killed by pfiesteria in the Neuse River in North Carolina.
(5) Since 1995, an additional one billion fish have been killed from manure runoff in estuaries and coastal areas in North Carolina, and the Maryland and Virginia tributaries leading into the Chesapeake Bay. These deaths can be directly related to the 10 million hogs currently being raised in North Carolina and the 620 million chickens on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
(6) The pollution from animal waste causes respiratory problems, skin infections, nausea, depression and even death for people who live near factory farms. Livestock waste has been linked to six miscarriages in women living near a hog factory in Indiana.
(7) In Virginia, state guidelines indicate that a safe level of fecal coliform bacteria is 200 colonies per 100 milliliters of water. In 1997, some streams had levels as high as 424,000 per 100 milliliters.
Animal Welfare
(1) Each full-grown chicken in a factory farm has as little as six-tenths of a square foot of space. Because of the crowding, they often become aggressive and sometimes eat each other. This has lead to the painful practice of debeaking the birds.
(2) Hogs become aggressive in tight spaces and often bite each other's tails, which has caused many farmers to cut the tails off.
(3) Concrete or slatted floors allow for easy removal of manure, but because they are unnatural surfaces for pigs, the animals often suffer skeletal deformities.
(4) Ammonia and other gases from manure irritate animals' lungs, to the point where over 80% of US pigs have pneumonia upon slaughter.
(5) Due to genetic manipulation, 90% of broiler chickens have trouble walking.
Economics
(1) Almost 30% of agricultural subsidies go to the top two percent of farms and over four-fifths to the top 30%.
(2) In 1970, there were approximately 900,000 farms in the United States; by 1997, there were only 139,000.
(3) Between 1969 and 1992, the number of producers selling 1000 hogs annually or less declined 73%. Producers selling more than 1000 annually increased 320%, according to the US Census of Agriculture.
(4) Estimated inputs to produce a pound of: Pork: 6.9 pounds of grain, .44 gallons of gasoline, 430 gallons of water Beef: 4.8 pounds of grain, .25 gallons of gasoline, 390 gallons of water
(5) Meat production has grown worldwide from 44 million tons in 1950 to 211 million tons in 1997.
(6) The price of meat would double or triple if full ecological costs -including fossil fuel use, groundwater depletion and agricultural-chemical pollution - were factored in.
(7) 90% of the nation's poultry production is controlled by 10 companies.
(8) In Maryland, chickens outnumber people 59 to 1.
Antibiotics and Public Health
(1) Overuse of antibiotics in animals is causing more strains of drug-resistant bacteria, which is affecting the treatment of various life-threatening diseases in humans. The Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences has estimated the annual cost of treating antibiotic-resistant infections in the U.S. at $30 billion.
(2) Fifty million pounds of antibiotics are produced in the U.S. each year. Twenty million pounds are given to animals, of which 80% (16 million pounds) is used on livestock merely to promote more rapid growth. The remaining 20% is used to help control the multitude of diseases that occur under such tightly confined conditions, including anemia, influenza, intestinal diseases, mastitis, metritis, orthostasis, and pneumonia.
(3) Chickens are reservoirs for many food borne pathogens including Campylobacter and Salmonella. 20% of broiler chickens in the US are contaminated with Salmonella and 80% are contaminated with Campylobacter in the processing plant. Campylobacter is the most common known cause of bacterial food borne illness in the US.
(4) 5000 deaths and 76 million cases of food-borne illness occur annually.
(5) Antibiotics in farm animals leave behind drug-resistant microbes in meat and milk. With every burger and shake consumed, super-microbes settle in the stomach where they transfer drug resistance to bacteria in the body, making one more vulnerable to previously-treatable conditions.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Toxic/factoryfarm.cfm
:thumbup:
The agribusiness industry claims innocently that it’s trying to stop animal cruelty with this bill. But the real goal is to stop prosecutions of animal cruelty by criminalizing whistleblowing on factory farms.
The bill makes it a crime to videotape animal cruelty or abuse and then fail to turn in the evidence to authorities within 48 hours. That's to stop animal rights activists from accumulating enough documentation to prove that animal cruelty is routine at some factory farms and slaughterhouses. Under this bill, farmers can claim the abuse is a one-time occurrence and go on their merry way.
To their credit, a couple of Republicans tried to shame their colleagues into voting against this bill, which came from that corporate front, the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Murfreesboro Sen. Bill Ketron went so far as to point out that Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy were cruel to animals when they were little. Senate GOP leader Mark Norris said the bill’s advocates don’t really give a rat’s ass about stopping animal cruelty.
Of the state Farm Bureau, Norris said, “They support the bill but they should be ashamed for doing so. If you’re truly concerned about animal abuse, deal with the root cause not what people do after they see it. The implication of this bill is that it’s OK to abuse animals. It’s all right.”
The bill is soon to be up for debate in the House Calendar and Rules Committee, where some Republicans are plotting to try to stop it from advancing to the House floor.
http://m.nashvillescene.com/nashville/b ... &year=2013
From Jack McElroy editor Knoxville News
If the Ag Gag bill happens to pass and the News Sentinel records images of animal cruelty, we will not consider ourselves bound to turn those images over to law enforcement. We will assume that the shield law, and more importantly, the First Amendment, will pre-empt such a law. I'd recommend that anyone else who believes in freedom of expression take the same position, too.
http://m.nashvillescene.com/nashville/b ... &year=2013
These bills are a clear violation of freedom of speech guaranteed by the constitution. If the farming industry feels threatened enough to push for a law that makes it a criminal offense to document their daily activities you can only imagine what they're hiding.
http://youtu.be/tGIsNXudxg8
I would encourage people to eat less or no meat and if you do eat meat to buy it from a source you are sure practices kind treatment of animals.
The problem is Factory farms supply the bulk of food in the United States. The majority of people don't have any other options than to get their food sourced from factory farms.
99.9% of chickens for meat
99% of turkeys
97% of laying hens
95% of pigs
78% of cattle
Contaminated food sickens 48 million Americans each year resulting in 100,000 hospitalizations and 3000 deaths. These new laws will only increase these numbers.
That's unfortunate. I wonder- is that because most people don't have a choice about where there food comes from or don't exercise that choice? I'm sure some don't have a choice but I also know more people could support small independent farms and farmer's markets than do.
it's because you no longer have a gov't that works for the people ... it works for corporations whose primary purpose is to maximize profits with little consequence to the health of the people or the planet ...
I think it's more so that the majority of people simply don't care where there food comes from.
I think most people don't think they have a choice. Studying ag in my human geography class right now and some kids are really curious about what I eat since I don't consume processed food. Several of them think they'll starve if they remove all the processed food from their pantry. It took some investigating on my part but I found farmers markets and CSA's to support. Here is a resource if anyone is interested
http://www.localharvest.org/
I think if more people were aware of these options then most people could participate in the local food chain rather than eat the factory farmed crap.
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
I think this is precisely the problem. When you start really investigating the link between corporations and the government it is really scary. Let's just say I'm not a conspiracy theorist but in this case I might be. One of the absolute best books I've ever read about our industrial food supply is Robyn O'Brien's book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Unhealthy-Truth-Shocking-Investigation/dp/0767930746/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366214815&sr=8-1&keywords=robyn+obrien
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
We've all seen the grocery store packages of meat, eggs, and dairy products decorated with reassuring phrases such as "natural" and "free-range" and pictures of happy animals running around quaint country barns. But people who buy organic or free-range animal products because they think that the animals are treated well are sadly mistaken.
Many organic and free-range farms cram thousands of animals together in sheds or mud-filled lots to increase profits, just as factory farms do, and the animals often suffer through the same mutilations—such as debeaking, dehorning, and castration without painkillers—that occur on factory farms.
Organically raised chickens on some farms suffer from higher mortality rates than drugged chickens because extremely crowded, filthy housing conditions, coupled with a lack of antibiotics, can lead to even more parasites than are already found in drugged chickens.
Many "organically raised" cows are sent to factory-farm feedlots to be fattened prior to slaughter, where they are caked with feces and mud. Cows who are fattened on feedlots can still be labeled organic as long as they're given organic feed.
Cows on organic dairy farms may be kept in sheds or filthy enclosures, where they spend their lives mired in their own waste, enduring the strain of forced yearly pregnancies and having their calves taken away from them. If their udders become infected from frequent milkings, which often happens, many farmers deny them medicine, because if they medicate the animals, they won't be able to sell the milk as organic.
Cattle have their horns cut off and their testicles cut out of their scrotums, and many are branded with sizzling-hot irons, resulting in third-degree burns. Pigs on organic farms often have their tails chopped off and their ears notched, and some have rings forced into their sensitive noses in order to permanently prevent them from rooting in the grass and dirt, which is one of a pig's favorite pastimes. Chickens on organic egg farms usually have part of their sensitive beaks cut off, causing acute pain and often death. None of these animals are given any painkillers.
At the end of their sad lives, the animals who don't die on the farm are shipped on trucks through all weather extremes, usually without food, water or rest, to the same slaughterhouses used by factory farms. There, they are hung upside-down and their throats are cut, often while they are still conscious and struggling to escape. Some are still conscious when they are forced into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering tanks or when their bodies are hacked apart.
A HEALTHIER ALTERNATIVE?
The only advantage that organic products have is that they do not contain antibiotics, hormones, or an arsenic-based additive (as many non-organic chicken products do). Although flesh from these animals might be somewhat safer than that from drugged animals, the healthiest choice is to avoid all meat, eggs, and dairy foods. Organic, "natural," "humane," and free-range flesh, milk, and eggs are still laden with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol, just as all animal products are.
Major studies linking the consumption of animal products to heart disease, cancer, and other leading killers suggest that it's these components of animal foods—animal fat, animal protein, and a lack of fiber—that lead to a higher risk of developing many diseases.
Organic and free-range animals are killed in the same filthy slaughterhouses as animals from factory farms, so their flesh is subject to the same potential for bacterial contamination from unsanitary conditions.
http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used ... -myth.aspx
Another corporate trick to get us to eat their low quality food is to label it natural or organic or some other healthy term that the average consumer doesn't suspect is really a sham for buying the same old thing.
While I agree with your sentiment about the term organic, I have to disagree with chucking animal proteins altogether. THere are a lot of new studies that suggest that the reason many vegans and vegetarians have a lower risk of heart disease correlates to their overall healthier lifestyles. Many newer studies suggest that eating grass fed AND finished beef causes no greater increase in heart disease and cancer than being a vegetarian. In fact, many of the studies that I have examined suggest that it is a disturbance in the gut flora and bacteria that contribute to many of our diseases, ranging from asthma to cancer to heart disease. This article is a bit too long to post but he makes some interesting points.
http://chriskresser.com/red-meat-and-tmao-its-the-gut-not-the-meat
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
Every advance in animal welfare and prosecution for animal cruelty in agriculture has come from whistleblowers. This is a real disappointment, and more evidence that our elected officials are working for big business, not for the people.