Ag-Gag Laws Could Make America Sick | Later On

Businesses strongly oppose activities and regulations that expose dangerous practices, corner cutting, and other questionable (and often illegal) activities. Now that they are gaining control of the government, they are trying to make it illegal to expose business wrong-doing. Brandon Keim writes at Wired Science:

A wave of laws that target animal welfare activists who take undercover videos at factory farms has been criticized for chilling free speech and allowing cruelty to continue in secret. But it?s not only animal well-being at issue. So is public health.

Some food safety experts say these so-called ag-gag laws will cloak disease-spreading industry practices, such as processing ill cattle and housing poultry in filthy conditions, in secrecy, raising risks of food contamination.

?The ag-gag laws are touted as preventing animal activists from getting access to private places, but there?s a much broader concern the public should have,? said Elisabeth Holmes, a staff attorney at the nonprofit Center for Food Safety. ?Public health issues, food safety issues, environmental issues: all those things can be exposed through undercover investigations.?

The?first-ever ag-gag prosecution, involving a Utah woman who took roadside videos of cows at a Draper City slaughterhouse, was announced this this week. Charges?were soon dropped, but the incident hinted at a future in which farms are largely hidden from public sight.

Ag-gag laws were passed in Iowa, Missouri and Utah in 2011 and 2012, and submitted for consideration in ten state legislatures ? Arkansas, California, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wyoming, and Vermont ? this year. Broadly speaking, they make it illegal to take photographs or videos without farmer consent, though some go further.?Pennsylvania?s proposed law, criminalizes downloading such material over the internet.

The laws have drawn disapproval from many quarters, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Press Photographers Union, who say they threaten public discourse, though most criticisms focus on?abuse of animals?that might go unchecked in the absence of activist attention.

Against these criticisms, farm industry advocates argue that activists often misportray what actually happens on farms, turning isolated incidents into inflammatory narratives of routine abuse that further anti-meat-eating goals. The industry also portrays undercover video-taking as a violation of farmer rights.

?At the end of the day it?s about personal property rights or the individual right to privacy,? said Bill Meierling, a spokesman for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative business group that?drafted the model?for many of the ag-gag laws,?to the Associated Press. ?You wouldn?t want me coming into your home with a hidden camera.?

The nation?s food, however, doesn?t come from people?s homes. It comes from farms ? and in a food system that?s?both vulnerable and productive, with a single burger containing meat from multiple farms, making problems at a single facility a potentially national issue, hidden cameras are often the only cameras. Much of what?s publicly known about factory farms comes from activities that could soon be illegal. . .

It?s amazing to see what are obviously bad-faith or fallacious arguments advanced in favor of the ag-gag laws. If those are the best reasons in favor of the laws, the laws are extremely bad.

Source: http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/ag-gag-laws-could-make-america-sick/

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