Gagging Investigators

Guest Post by John Stossel

Gagging Investigators

Recording events from public land shouldn’t be a crime.

Yet when a woman in Utah, standing by a public road, filmed farmworkers pushing a cow with a bulldozer, the farmer drove up to her and said, “You cannot videotape my property.”

Soon the police came and local prosecutors charged her with “agricultural operation interference.”

They dropped the charges several months later since she was on public land.

But what if she’d posed as a farmworker, got a job on the farm and then secretly recorded what she saw?

Increasingly, activists do that. More than a hundred such undercover investigations have been done.

They then distribute video that sometimes shows animals being cruelly abused. In my video this week, we see calves being hit, kicked and thrown.

Farmers, upset about such recordings, are now asking politicians to outlaw them, and several state legislatures have obliged. They’ve passed “ag-gag” laws — bans on sneaking onto farms to secretly record what they see.

Kay Johnson Smith of the Animal Agriculture Alliance supports such laws, though she doesn’t use the term “ag-gag.”

“We call it ‘farm protection,'” she told me. “Activists stalk farms to try to capture something that the public doesn’t understand. The agricultural community is the only business where this sort of tactic is really being used.”

Smith says the activists’ real agenda is not just preventing cruelty to animals: “These activist groups want to eliminate all of animal agriculture.”

I believe her. Many activists are animal rights extremists.

But I also worry that laws like ag-gag rules will stop people from revealing abuses. I’m an investigative reporter. I can’t do my job well if laws prevent me from showing the abuse. Audiences often won’t believe what I report if they can’t see it for themselves.

Videos made by the group Mercy for Animals have led to criminal charges. Some of their investigations led Walmart to create new purchasing policies.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund claims ag-gag laws violate the First Amendment. They’ve succeeded in getting several states’ ag-gag laws struck down.

When Iowa’s law was ruled unconstitutional, legislators simply replaced it with a narrower law that forbids activists to lie to get access to farms.

The activists argue that because farms lie about their practices, the only way to reveal the truth is to lie to get onto farms.

Activists simply “want to ensure that the American public knows how these foods are processed, what happens to animals,” says Animal Legal Defense Fund lawyer Amanda Howell.

“You’ve got tens of thousands of animals in warehouses standing on concrete floors never seeing the light of day. … If that affects people’s purchasing decisions, then there’s a reason for it,” says Howell.

“They want to make their movie … their sensational video,” retorts Smith. “If they really cared about animals, they would stop it right then! Instead, they go weeks and months without reporting anything to the farm owners.”

That’s often true.

Activists say long-term investigations are necessary because otherwise “a company can say this is a one-off,” says Howell. Long-term investigations “show that’s something that happens every day.”

I took that argument to Smith.

“What they really want is to stop people from eating meat, milk and eggs,” she said. “There are bad apples in every industry, (but) 99.9% of farmers in America, they do the right thing every single day. Farming isn’t always pretty.”

I asked Howell if she and her group do want to end all consumption of meat and eggs. It’s funny watching her response on the video. She never gives a straight answer.

But her evasions bother me less than corporations using politicians to censor their critics.

Whatever you think of the activists — and I have problems with many of them — government shouldn’t pass special laws that prevent people from revealing what’s true.

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old white guy
old white guy

Today it is becoming more difficult to believe anything seen in any video. Algorithms that can put someone’s face in a scene where they were not present has reached the point where it is impossible to tell the real from the fake. I rarely take anyone’s video or statements as fact, there is just too much deception going on.

grace country pastor

To those who downvote this (owg’s) comment…

flash
flash

Brutal treatment of farm animals, in particular on corporate farms , is a national epidemic and tragedy. Look up some of the vids. It’s tear your heart out.

That said . There is life without meat and a healthier and happier one too. I can testify to that.

Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

Unless they take into account the way those animals were fed, there’s absolutely zero connection between eating meat and an early death. If every bit of meat you eat comes from animals that lived their entire life eating GMO feeds that were sprayed with RoundUp, then maybe there’s a link, but saying it is meat alone is 100% bullshit. And in what form was that meat consumption? Big Macs and buffalo wings?

Annie
Annie

Thanks HSF I was going to make the same point. Same issue with animal fat vs meat. Animal fat from organic grass fed animals is good for you.

flash
flash

Didn’t watch the video did you? Too bad. Your loss.

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
William Paley

MrLiberty
MrLiberty

I had a co-worker who thought that Jello came from plants. When I told her where it really came from (boiled bones and cartilage), she never ate it again.

People are truly ignorant of where their food comes from. They are especially ignorant about so-called Factory Farms. They are even more ignorant about how their massive need for meat consumption at every meal, at lower prices with questionable quality, is the very thing that contributes to the existence of factory farms in the first place. Exposing the truth of these operations is all part of an educated consumer base.

yahsure
yahsure

Just be glad your not a farm animal. Being killed and eaten is never going to be a pleasant thing. It’s one of those harsh realities in life.

Pequiste
Pequiste

Don’t worry, in the final analysis we are all food for worms.

grace country pastor

This mortal body anyway.

Philippians 3:20-21 KJB… “For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.”

Morongobill
Morongobill

This article makes me want to go out and pick up a t-bone steak for supper tonight.

A
A

Activists stalk farms to try to capture something that the public doesn’t understand.

Well no-shit. The public doesn’t understand industrial agriculture. The big-ag folks want you to think it’s just like Old MacDonald’s Farm but it isn’t. That’s something I think the public (the consumer) has a right to see first hand. Actually, I think it should be part of school curriculum to fully understand where you food comes from. Follow the entire process from “factory” farm to table. I’d wager people will still buy that shit food because it’s cheap.

The activists that film this stuff are probably militant vegetarians. They aren’t going to change the fact that I buy responsibly raised protein or I just hunt it myself in the wild, like man has been doing for millennia. And I’ve spent time on real farms where it’s a lifestyle, not a job, and abusing the animals was strictly not tolerated. Any person who abuses a farm animal is NOT a farmer.

AWBBBB
AWBBBB

As usual, there’s a difference between fact and truth, even stukfuk knows that.

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

These aren’t farms. They’re industrial agricultural operations. They have literally nothing in common.

MrLiberty
MrLiberty

But they ARE where most people’s meat comes from, but people are ignorant of that fact or these conditions. As pointed out above, bigAgra NEEDS everyone to believe that EVERY farm looks like yours and every animal is treated wonderfully, fed only great stuff, has plenty of room to move around, and that diseased animals (or “downers”) would never make their way into the human food supply. If these folks don’t share the truth, who will?

ILuvCO2
ILuvCO2

CAFO – Confined Animal Feeding Operation. Just sick No they are not farms.. Don’t buy their products people. Buy grass fed humane. All the studies about how meat kills use this type of cafo meat. If you use grass fed humanely treated meat the results are quite different. cafo meat – high in heart harming omega 6 and very low in omega 3. Grass fed an incredible source of omega 3. We get too much rancid omega 6 from crap vegetable oil, never mind crap beef. Wake up folks and do some research.

THE ARK-HIVE PROJECT

Reality is in suspension. Chaos overload makes the mind explode. Or want to escape via substances. Cruise the digital Ark to get away.

SeeBee
SeeBee

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