Across the country, legislatures are responding to whistleblowers and activists who have exposed inhumane and at times unsanitary practices at farms by passing laws that criminalize the taking of photos or videos at agricultural facilities.
Farming interests have publicly backed the campaign to outlaw recording. But emails I obtained through a records request reveal that in Idaho, which passed an “ag-gag” law last year, dairy industry lobbyists actually crafted the legislation that was later introduced by lawmakers.
State Sen. Jim Patrick, R-Twin Falls, said he sponsored the bill in response to an activist-filmed undercover video that showed cows at an Idaho plant being beaten by workers, dragged by the neck with chains, and forced to live in pens covered in feces, which activists said made the cows slip, fall and injure themselves. The facility, Bettencourt Dairies, is a major supplier for Burger King and Kraft. The workers who were filmed were fired.
Introducing the bill, Patrick compared the activists behind the Bettencourt video to marauding invaders who burned crops to starve their enemies. “This is clear back in the sixth century B.C.,” Patrick said, according to Al Jazeera America. “This is the way you combat your enemies.”
Idaho is a major center for dairy production, an industry that generates $2.5 billion a year in the state.
Patrick’s bill was introduced on February 10, 2014, sailed through committee within days, and was signed by Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter on February 28. The legislation calls for a year in jail and fines up to $5,000 for covertly recording abuses on farms or for those who lie on employment applications about ties to animal rights groups or news organizations.
But the groundwork was laid by Dan Steenson, a registered lobbyist for the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, a trade group for the industry.
Steenson testified in support of the ag-gag bill, clearly disclosing his relationship with the trade group. Emails, however, show that he also helped draft the bill. On January 30, before Sen. Patrick’s bill was formally introduced, Steenson emailed Bob Naerebout, another Dairymen lobbyist, and Brian Kane, the assistant chief deputy of the state attorney general’s office, with a copy of the legislation. “The attached draft incorporates the suggestions you gave us this morning,” Steenson wrote, thanking Kane for his help in reviewing the bill. Kane responded with “one minor addition” to the legislation, which he described to Steenson as “your draft.”
The draft text of the legislation emailed by Steenson closely mirrors the bill signed into law.
“Dan and the Idaho dairymen had a large input but also Idaho Farm Bureau as well as Idaho-eastern seed growers,” Patrick said in an email to The Intercept. “This was not about only dairy so but all of agriculture since all farms have risks of distorted facts,” he added. “We only want the whole truth to be told not just a few social media sites.”
The law made Idaho the seventh state to pass “ag-gag” efforts. Similar efforts have been signed into law in recent years in Utah, Iowa and Missouri.
This week, North Carolina may become the next state to do so. The North Carolina version of the act covers not just farms and agricultural facilities, but many other workplaces, including nursing homes and daycares — an expansion of the law that critics say will muffle whistleblowers. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory is deciding whether to sign or veto the legislation.
View the Idaho emails below:
And here’s the video:
What happened to freedom of speach protect the innocent. To not investigate or proventing us to see the negative and if all is up and up then underinvestigation should not be a problen
The pictures are so gruesome but undeniably necessary to prevent animal cruelty and how illegal for our legislatures to undermine public interests for
humane treatment of all animals. This should upset everyone. Good article!
These are the kind of scenes that remind you that there is truly evil on this earth and the pits of hell that are reserved for those who inflict pain and cruelty upon the living will be burned and tortured in hell for eternity and for a VERY good reason. I don’t feel sorry for the afterlife that malignant sinners have rightfully earned.
You’ll likely never read this Kelly, but I write it nevertheless.
Yes, there’s great evil in such cruelty, but the penalty isn’t
quite what you imagine.
What happens when we die is clear realization of who and
what we are. When we realize what we’ve done in our lives
juxtaposed to what we might have done in the clear light of
truth, the sorrow is unimaginable, the shame, overwhelming.
There’s no hell beyond our witness to our own humanity.
It’s more just than any humanly imaginable punishment.
We all see our human selves for exactly what we were.
What’s redeeming for the soul is its capacity for compassion.
So, better to realize that and engage it while we’re still human.
Appalling that people calling themselves advocates of privacy such as TI, would repeatedly block my comments, which come from an alias YopMail email addess. Hypocrites abound everywhere!
These images will haunt me forever. How anyone can consider this acceptable is beyond me. The Center for Consumer Freedom has captured media to the point where there is a constant onslaught of disparaging stories maligning the groups that expose meat and dairy industry practices. Ag-gag is unstoppable. It will be law in all states where it will have the desired impact. But really, how many supposedly isolated incidents does it take for people to understand that this is industry standard and quit consuming this stuff.
imagine a bill that called for a year in jail and fines up to $5,000 for covertly recording and reporting child abuse
I’m not quite sure why they’re showing that the graphic is really heartbreaking I don’t understand how can not be these people put to judgment animal cruelty let’s stop this please we need another station sign and put these people to justice stop showing these things if nothing can be done cuz its very heartbreaking the need to be such a law is hot on animal cool these put these people suggested in jail will they belong
I understand that some people may perceive this as an infringement on the right of free speech and be concerned. However, to alleviate those concerns, I would like to point out they will still be free to draw cartoons of Muhammad.
I honestly would have appreciated if there were some kind of warning of the content of that video. Please consider adding some bold red warning text above the video.
The old saying about how laws and sausages are made has never been so apt.
“The facility, Bettencourt Dairies, is a major supplier for Burger King . . . .”
Ah, yes, Burger King. Now where have we heard that name before. Oh, sure, they are the scuzbags who have decided to pretend Canada is their home to avoid paying taxes in the United States.
Anyone who eats at Burger King ever again deserves the worst Corporate America has to inflict, but the trouble is — the rest of us get it too, deserved or not.
The republicans are surely the ones who want to hide the cruelty from us. They have no compassion, no empathy, and are the most uncaring political party I have ever seen. Animals have a right to be treated humanely right to the very moment they are put to death. It is a responsibility and the ethical and right thing to do.
Next thing you know, writing articles about animal cruelty, or commenting on posts about animal cruelty is going to be illegal.
Unbelievable!
It has to be a systemic problem. It’s difficult for me to believe that these people who’re nonchalantly hitting heads with hammers are cruel and inhuman by nature. These people have pets or kids, I’m sure. It must be that the system harasses them unless they move X number of calves per hour from point A to B, and at some point they just start taking short cuts, and the short cuts get worse and worse, until you get this video. Just sick.
These were clearly trouble-making and perhaps even terrorist cows who deserved what they got for disobeying their handlers. The Gitmo model works on bovines too!
Just another step closer to the implementation of an outright police state here in the US. Where everything is hidden from public view, and to expose any injustice is being made a crime itself. It’s truly scary just how quickly it’s happening. Civil liberties are being eroded on a daily basis now. And, the worst part about it is that the vast majority of people in this country are seemingly happy to turn a blind eye to what is happening.
This kind of statutory censorship is not only a threat to the consumer, but it represents a real regression in our society. Muckrakers of a century ago, like Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair or Ida B. Wells (you can look them up), wouldn’t have lasted a month under these kinds of laws.
Anything the corporate national security state’s players do must be secret, as it is all essential national security infrastructure. One would be hard pressed to come up with a legal structure more aligned with a totalitarian merger of private corporate and government interests combined. It is precisely the definition Mussolini gave for fascism. There is no longer any public interest save the private corporate one. How easily the Patriot Act’s constitutional depredations have been turned to support undermining democratic and public accountability by the donorists who control government.
Thank you, Lee, for exposing how lawmakers do the bidding of commercial interests instead of representing citizens and promoting public interests.
Ag-gag bills are designed to silence the messenger (people taking videos of abuse) rather than enforcing laws against the abusers. They are designed by the abusers to keep everyone in the dark about the abuse. Not much different from spousal or child abusers who try to hide abuse from the outside world.
Cases of animal abuse are widespread and well-documented and not isolated incidents — it is standard industry practice — and for a very good reason. Abusing animals adds a large percentage to the profits of factory farmers. The more animals are crammed into smaller spaces, moved quicker through assembly lines, and treated as machines instead of the creatures they are, the more money they make. Factory farmers deny this saying it is in their interests to “care” for the animals or to have a “healthy herd”. But they have calculated the precise number of sick animals they can have that increases their bottom lines to the maximum degree and it actually adds to their profits to have some percentage of sick or abused animals when it increases production rates.That’s why the tail-docking, castration, debeaking and overcrowding are standard practices – It’s cheaper that way. Several spokespersons for the egg industry admitted that grinding live chicks up in a wood-chipper-machine or suffocating chicks in plastic bags was standard practice, further proof that abuse is planned and calculated. That they can advocate this practice with a straight face and admit it to everyone tells us about the depths of their inhumanity.
The fear and pain and anguish is in the meat and the milk and goes to the consumer… True or not?
. . .
. the question – how did public property become private?. that bill/contract says private/public property
These so-called farmers or ranchers are nothing more than factory owners. This issue is one that has been in my thoughts frequently of late. Being a relative newcomer to rural life, I am surrounded by CAFOs(Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation). Some are worse than others, with some just looking a little crowded, and others, especially chicken factories, have conditions you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. I happen to enjoy steak and hamburger, and chicken, and most things meat, so I started to look for sources of meat not affiliated with CAFOs. They are not easy to find, and when you do find a source, the price is much higher, and the availability is sporadic. It nearly always comes down to money. I can always go fishing.
The United States is such a bizaaaarrrreee place.
Like the story about the hacked Russian emails, this issue puts our opinions about spying to a meaningful test.
Suppose a homeowner has a burst pipe and summons a plumber during an emergency. The plumber arrives and seems to do his job, for which he is paid a pricey hourly fee. A few days later the homeowner starts getting emails about how bad his house looks, the dirty dishes in his sink, the clothes on his floor. Maybe the police are curious about the water pipe in his bedroom. Because it turns out the plumber took a few minutes while the homeowner was looking for the checkbook to pace around the building, using his cell phone to take pictures. Or even had a concealed body camera running the whole time. What would we think of that – someone who says he is an employee, but really is a spy in your home?
Of course, a factory farm like the one later in the video is not really what we think of as a private residence. But how much privacy does it deserve? And what about the locations earlier in the video, which seemed like they might be smaller ranches? When do we say that someone has a right to expect that a service provider is not a secret agent?
Of course, the government has notoriously pushed the other way, trying to enlist meter readers or anyone else to report signs of drug production or even use. But many here are against that.
Well, for my opinion, in this case the laws seem to go too far, or rather, they don’t go far enough in setting up a theoretical basis. For example, I feel that when the agricultural worker signs up, there should be a point at which he is formally agreeing to respect the privacy of the establishment he works for, or else there can be no restriction on him. But those of us who don’t want drones flying up to our windows and posting video of us picking our noses to the Internet probably can’t really support an unhindered right of anyone to break into a farm and photograph the ‘terrible’ conditions.
Meanwhile, I think the unrealistic expectations of “animal welfare” supporters tend to inflame the issue. Ugly or no, a hard knock on the skull with a hammer is a traditional way of killing cattle, and is not really much different from the pneumatic bolt that might be used by larger companies with better equipment. A few twitches in a recently killed animal are not proof that it is really awake or suffering. And whenever we sink our teeth into a steak, we know we are sinking our teeth into a certain number of … accidents, whether it is E. coli infected beef that had to be cooked thoroughly so as not to kill us, or cows with incompetent killers that had a slow passage to the other side. On that much, the meat eaters and the anti-meat activists should agree.
Dirty dishes and nose picking are not illegal. Beating animals, dragging them around by the neck, and even worse evil shit that has been documented on farms is either illegal under existing law, or would be illegal if people knew what was going on. This is pure whistle blower silencing.
Goddamn right. Word.
Videos like this often mix legal and illegal, which is why I gave that example. But suppose when your plumber goes snooping around your house, he only looks for violations of law – marijuana, illegal cable hookups, pirate music downloads, building code violations. Does that make it OK with you that he came in rigged with a body camera with the intent of searching for something you could be charged with?
I understand that there is a larger issue here: corporate factory farms aren’t like an old-time farmer’s backyard. Corporations aren’t really people, and corporate privacy doesn’t seem worth defending to the same extent as individual privacy (even as the laws frequently rush to protect it while leaving individuals on their own). When a corporation’s reputation is ruined it can dissolve itself and leave its owners with fair shares of valuable assets to sell or to reunite under a new name and management, but individuals do not have that protection. Still, that argument runs out of steam for me when I consider that the people who actually end up with a criminal record for animal abuse after some trumped-up prosecution of a rare incident are the dirt poor farm workers who were only doing what they were told! Whether such workers have to deal with spies looking to dig up dirt on them at home when their plumbing goes bad or at work when something goes wrong, the effect is rather similar. Now you could say that they are just as vulnerable when the company tapes them, and that definitely is true; but usually companies don’t race to get charges filed over every little thing, and when they do, we may have further issues to consider.
No, the reason you gave that example is either you are (1) lacking in the intellectual faculties necessary to discuss a subject logically, or (2) a troll for the rascals that perpetrate economic crime after economic crime.
My money is on (2).
It must be so easy to dismiss someone you disagree with as either being unintellegent or a troll.
Animal cruelty is absolutely terrible. But so’s sneaking your way onto farms with hidden cameras to “expose” wrongdoings. For every one time actual cruelty as mentioned in this article is found, there are countless times where the dirt if either exaggerated or fabricated.
And make no mistake about it, the animal welfare side has had it’s share of politically driven individuals. Perhaps you’re familiar with the film crews over the years that have paid people to torture animals on film for the sake of propaganda? The IFAW gladly used footage from the 60’s of a seal being skinned alive, even though they admitted that they have never seen this method ever used. The original footage was, again, a film crew who paid a man to put down the club, and use his knife with the seal alive. This was not the way a hunter would have handled this seal, but that film crew just HAD to have footage of the animal being tortured.
What’s to stop people from planting “evidence” so they can get farms shut down? Again, I am against animal cruelty. But make no mistake about it, there are lots of people on the vegan side who WANT animal cruelty. Showing pictures and videos as a shock tactic, because the general populace doesn’t want to stop eating and using animals, is propaganda and nothing more.
Or do you think people shouldn’t be allowed to own dogs because of the few monsters that torture and abuse their pets?
Let’s change your example slightly. Suppose the plumber finds, not dirty dishes, but a corpse, human trafficking, and weapons. Surely you’d think differently about it
It’s an interesting point and with the high intensity emotions surrounding videos like these could, potentially, be problematic in that way, even though legislation seems to be largely on the side of the farms at this point. I would probably be much more likely to agree to some sort of Big Brother state if it guaranteed the safety of baby animals from the horrors you see in such videos. And I think in coming decades there may be enough market pressure on companies to improve conditions and transparency at farms that this alone might suffice, or at least help.
I assume that, as in childcare or nursing homes, if employees are aware of abuse they have a legal obligation to report it, so I’d be curious to know if the justice system follows up on that side, or only on the side of the activists. Also, they may be shooting themselves in the foot in that I think there would be a certain amount of media sensationalism surrounding an activist going to jail for documenting a truly ugly abuse (as opposed to something less dramatic like a leaking pipe, expired product labels, etc.).
To accept Big Brother for the sake of “baby animals” is truly throwing away everything for nothing. It is simply not in the nature of animals to establish rights. Try telling a coyote to slaughter a deer humanely! Or a roving housecat not to torture mice and birds. Some of the funniest animal issues arise when pet owners interact, and the law tries to decide when the owner is responsible for the cruelty committed by his animal. (They’re clear on dog fights, but for cat versus myna there’s no telling) Oh, maybe Big Brother has a plan where someday they will have drones track down every animal at birth and put a chip in its head to enforce peaceful relations, yet somehow I doubt there will be activists to push for it by the time it is possible to implement!
Not gonna lie, if they called it the Baby Farm Animal And Rhino Protection Act, wherein cameras were going to be placed in all factory farms and, as it happened, all businesses because they were lumped into the same building category, I’d probably vote for it.
Made it about 10 seconds into that video. Just awful…
“we only want the whole truth to be told” ha ha ha ha ha hahah aha hahahaha
So what’s the missing context, Senator Patrick? For example: maybe those cows were being beaten as part of a *hilarious prank*? It was all choreographed? The cows were playing along?