The California Farm Bureau Federation, the powerful agribusiness trade group, along with its local affiliates, has pushed for aggressive policing and prosecutions of Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE. Now, records obtained by The Intercept show that the California Farm Bureau worked behind closed doors to limit legal exemptions that DxE has long claimed provide protections for its work.

DxE, which is based in Berkeley, California, has waged a provocative campaign of civil disobedience in recent years, staging actions that the group calls “open rescues,” in which volunteers brazenly walk into meat plants and seize animals, many of which are facing slaughter, often ferrying them to medical tents erected outside the facility or to local veterinarians.

The actions, which have included rescues at meat and egg plants over the last two years in Sonoma County, have seized headlines and drawn national attention to the organization’s cause — while mobilizing opposition within the factory farming industry. DxE has claimed that its actions are protected under an obscure section of state law, California Penal Code §597e, which authorizes individuals to enter pounds to provide nourishment for neglected animals.

In DxE’s view, the statute allows legal entry into an area in which animals are confined if the animals have been deprived of food and water for over 12 hours. The group consulted with Hadar Aviram, a professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, to develop a modern legal interpretation of §597e, which was originally passed in the 1870s and has rarely been cited in court. In DxE’s view, any commercial animal agriculture site constitutes a pound, given that the term simply refers to a facility for confined animals, a standard that is reflected in eight states with similar statutes.

That argument has enraged the animal agriculture interests throughout California, which have leaned on authorities to take a more aggressive response to DxE.

“In my view, what they are doing is bordering on terrorism involving the use of illegal practices to push their points of view,” said Tawny Tesconi, executive director of the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, an affiliate of the California Farm Bureau Federation, in an interview with KSRO radio host Pat Kerrigan. Following an action in which hundreds of DxE activists entered an egg farm in Petaluma to free chickens and care for them in medical tents set up around the facility by the group, Tesconi called for farmers to “work more closely with law enforcement and the DA’s office to provide the tools they need to fully prosecute actions like this.” (The police, notably, euthanized many of the chickens, which were found by veterinarians to be starving and unable to walk from being bred in sheds with thousands of birds.)

Behind closed doors, the California legislature moved last summer to redefine §597e, adding language to the code that explicitly exempts factory farms. The legal shift received virtually no attention or substantive legislative debate. The legislation that made the change was sponsored by Assemblyman Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield, whose bill, AB 1553, was presented as a “technical, nonsubstantive” change that required a lower threshold of scrutiny. The bill sailed through committee and was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last June.

DxE strongly disputes that the bill was merely a technical change and was shocked to discover the discreet push to amend the code. “Over one hundred activists have relied on §597e to protect them from politically-motivated prosecutions,” said DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung, who is also a former visiting law professor at Northwestern School of Law. “We’ve obtained dismissal or diversion of charges in dozens of cases where people were trying to give aid to starving animals.”

The California Farm Bureau denies promoting the bill, despite disclosures showing that the group lobbied on the Fong bill. “The California Farm Bureau did not actively advocate on the legislation, either for or against,” wrote Dave Kranz, a spokesperson for the California Farm Bureau. “We did take part in technical discussions about the bill and potential impacts to California agriculture, as was correctly disclosed.”

Fong’s office and the Sonoma County Farm Bureau did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The California Farm Bureau’s claim that the group acted merely as a neutral observer, and did not seek to limit the scope of §597e, appears unlikely given the group’s advocacy over the last year.

Robert Spiegel, a lobbyist with the California Farm Bureau in Sacramento, spoke at the Flamingo Resort & Conference Center in Santa Rosa last May to explain to farmers in Sonoma County how his organization had worked to respond to the threat posed by animal rights activists.

During his remarks, Spiegel referenced the interpretation produced by Aviram on behalf of DxE and informed the group that California Farm Bureau’s “senior legal counsel as well as other individuals in our operations” produced a counter-memo to dispute Aviram’s arguments. DxE shared a recording of Spiegel’s remarks and, using a records request, obtained a copy of Spiegel’s memo, which had been sent to the Sonoma County district attorney’s office as well as to other prosecutors in California.

The memo attempts to dispute DxE’s rationale for its use of §597e by claiming that even if animal farms are “pounds,” the group may not claim there is an “imminent threat” if they rely on past video evidence of abuse or deprivation.

Far from taking a neutral stance, the memo strongly suggests the California Farm Bureau’s lobbying team took an active role in shaping the interpretation of §597e.

Around the country, animal agriculture interests have worked carefully to criminalize similar forms of activism around factory farms, including hidden camera investigations. The Intercept previously obtained emails showing a bill signed into law in Idaho that provided criminal penalties for filming animal abuse at factory farms had been quietly authored by a dairy lobbyist — one of many so-called ag-gag laws enacted around the country. A federal judge later overturned most of the statute. Farm Bureau groups have worked to enact similar laws in Missouri, Iowa, Utah, and other states.

The California Farm Bureau wields significant influence in state politics. The group spends upward of $600,000 a year peddling influence in Sacramento with a team of eight in-house lobbyists, according to disclosures.

In 2018, the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, responding to a wave of open rescues, brought in a national farm industry group known as the Animal Agriculture Alliance to host seminars for farmers on how to push back against future DxE activism. The group has promoted ag-gag laws and in more recent years sought to pressure law enforcement to view animal rights activists as terror threats. The alliance relies on financial support from the American Farm Bureau, the California Farm Bureau’s national affiliate, as well as the National Pork Industry Foundation.

“The Farm Bureau wants to change §597e because it knows that factory farms routinely allow animals to starve to death,” added Hsiung. “It’s the result of a system that has operated in secrecy, and ruthless pursuit of profit, for decades.”

The post Factory Farm Industry Quietly Lobbies California Officials to Criminalize Animal Rescue Activism appeared first on The Intercept.

There is a largely hidden, poorly regulated, and highly profitable industry in the United States that has a gruesome function: breeding dogs for the sole purpose of often torturous experimentation, after which the dogs are killed because they are no longer of use.

Americans frequently express horror at festivals in countries such as China and South Korea where dogs are killed, cooked, and eaten. Mainstream media outlets in the U.S. routinely report, with a tone of disgust, on the use of dogs in those countries for food consumption.

But in the U.S. itself, corporations and academic institutions exploit dogs (as well as cats and rabbits) for excruciating experiments that are completely trivial, even useless, and are just as abusive as the practices in Asia that have produced so much moral indignation in the West. These dogs are frequently bred into life for the sole purpose of being laboratory objects, and spend their entire, often short, existence locked in a small cage, subjected to procedures that impose extreme pain and suffering.

The horrors of the dog experimentation industry are on vivid display at Ridglan Farms Inc., a company that provides beagles to research facilities.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s aptly named the Animal Usage report, 60,979 dogs were used in the U.S. for experimentation in 2016 alone. The reported number of all animals used for experimentation, whose reporting was required, was 820,812. Often, the experimentation has nothing to do with medical research, but rather trivial commercial interests, and in almost all cases, dogs provide little to no unique scientific value. This chart, compiled by Speaking of Research using USDA data, reflects the total numbers of animals used for experimentation in 2016 — an increase of 6.9 percent as compared to the prior year:

Dogs bred into life for use or sale as experimentation objects have all the same emotional complexities, sensations of suffering and deprivation, and inbred need for human companionship as household dogs which are loved as pets and members of the family. Yet the legalized cruelty and torture to which man’s best friend is subjected for profit in the U.S. is virtually limitless.

In fact, the majority of dogs bred and sold for experimentation are beagles, which are considered ideal because of their docile, human-trusting personality. In other words, the very traits that have made them such loving and loyal companions to humans are the ones that humans exploit to best manipulate them in labs.

Even when legal standards are adhered to — and they often are not — the permitted abuse to which these dogs are subjected is horrifying. They are often purposely starved or put into a state of severe thirst to induce behavior they would otherwise not engage in. They are frequently bred deliberately to have crippling, excruciating diseases, or sometimes are brought into life just to have have their organs, eyes, and other body parts removed and studied as puppies, and then quickly killed.

They are force-fed laundry detergents, pesticides, and industrial chemicals to the point of continuous vomiting and death. They are injected with lethal pathogens such as salmonella or rabies. They have artificial sweetener injected into their veins that causes the dogs’ testicles to shrink before they are killed and exsanguinated. Holes are drilled into their skulls so that viruses can be injected into their brains. And all of that is perfectly legal.

The horrors of the dog experimentation industry are on vivid display at Ridglan Farms Inc., one of the three largest firms in the U.S. that provides beagles to research facilities. Located in Dane County, Wisconsin — on a hill west of Madison — the corporation, according to Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, investigators, provides dogs to research facilities that include the University of Wisconsin, the University of Minnesota, and various colleges within the University of California system.

Last spring, activists with DxE entered a door that was ajar at the Ridglan facility in order to investigate conditions inside, document what they saw, and rescue a sampling of dogs in particular distress. What they found horrified even these hardened activists, who have seen years worth of severe animal abuse. DxE activists spent a year investigating the facility and the industry its serves, and are releasing their footage and accompanying report for the first time today.

One of the DxE investigators, Wayne Hsiung, told The Intercept, “As you approach the facility, the smell is overwhelming — exactly the same smell from a dog meat slaughterhouse in China.” The first thing the investigators saw upon entering — as demonstrated by the photo at the top of this article — was that “the dogs are housed in huge industrial sheds with massive ventilation fans, very similar to the sheds used in factory farms.” Hsiung, a former lawyer, added in an email:

Thousands of dogs are held in cages, usually 1-2 to a cage and stacked on top of one another, that are about twice the length of the dog’s body. We found no facilities for the dogs to step outside or exercise. The dogs sit on their own feces and urine, unable to escape their own waste. Dogs are routinely so desperate to escape that they slam themselves against the cage walls, desperately stretch their paws through the bars, and sometimes chew on the cages. The screams of the dogs in the facility are so loud that we were forced to yell at one another to communicate, even when we were only a foot away from one another.

In response to multiple requests from The Intercept that included detailed questions about what this story would include, a Ridglan spokesperson said the company would decline to comment.

Cages of “research dogs” stacked on top of each other at Ridglan Farms Inc.

Dog experimentation is pervasive

The number of dogs used for experimentation in the U.S. has generally declined some over the past several decades — though it rose again last year — but still remains remarkably high. The most common animals used for testing — mice, fish, and birds — are not covered by any federal regulations or reporting requirements, and thus no precise numbers are known, but estimates vary from 20 million to as many as 100 million.

The primary law governing treatment of animal experimentation is the Animal Welfare Act, or AWA, which was first enacted in 1966 under the name Laboratory Animal Welfare Act. Under all federal law, all forms of experimentation on animals — including on dogs — is legally permissible, even though superior research alternatives (such as stem cell research) are increasingly available. A small handful of states have banned product testing on animals if alternatives are available.

While the AWA permits all animal experimentation, it requires minimal standards of humane treatment for dogs that are bred and sold for experimentation. But even when these rules are complied with, the conditions in which “research dogs” are routinely kept are nothing short of barbaric.

For instance, regulations merely require that the dogs’ cage be six inches taller than their height and six inches longer than their body length. Doubling that size eliminates the requirement to allow the dogs out of their cage at all for exercise.

The cruelty even of treatment that complies with legal standards is illustrated by a handbook from one of the field’s most authoritative researchers. The Laboratory Animal Medicine and Science training program series, developed by the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine, the handbook is designed to create industry norms. Its author is Jerald Silverman, a leading authority figure in the animal research industry.

The handbook describes the proper methods for putting “ear tattoos” on the dogs for identification and tracking purposes. The first picture below is of a “research dog” kept in a cage that is twice the size required by federal regulations, which means, as Silverman notes, that the exercise requirements for the dog are eliminated. The two images below describe the “humane” way for treating research dogs, and the third relates to tattoos:

That means that tens of thousands of dogs are barely able to move. They are fully isolated, with their metal cages stacked on top of one another. Many “research dogs” never see the sunlight, go outside, or exercise, spending their entire lives locked in a cage.

Most dogs used in research are purchased from so-called Class A breeders, which are licensed specifically to breed and raise “research dogs.” (“Class B” dealers are ones who collect or buy animals, rather than breed them themselves.) Among the services they offer is “devocalization,” which the advocacy group NAVS describes as “a surgical procedure which makes it physically impossible for the dog to bark.” The procedure costs $20 to $47 per dog, according to NAVS, and is “performed so that barking dogs do not disturb lab technicians.” The Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association details the significant pain and risks from such procedures.

A new group devoted to stopping taxpayer-funded animal research, White Coat Waste Project, created some national news when they exposed horrific practices inside Veterans Affairs facilities earlier this year. “We’re talking about tests like taking six-month-old puppies – putting them on treadmills – forcing them to run. Exhausted dogs, inducing heart attacks, sloppy and botched surgeries, restraint devices, drilling holes in their skulls, destroying their brains and charging taxpayers for it,” one of the group’s founders reported.

Worst of all is that dogs and other mammals provide almost no medical value in experiments because of their physiology. Lawrence Hansen, a professor of neuroscience and pathology at the University of California-San Diego School of Medicine, once engaged in experimentation on dogs and wrote how ashamed he was of this work in a 2016 op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

From a scientific perspective, the problem is that dogs, monkeys and mice are not simplified versions of humans. This is why the NIH reports that 95 percent of drugs that pass animal tests — often including beagles — fail in humans because they don’t work or are dangerous. … In my specialty, Alzheimer’s disease, the drug failure rate is actually 99.6 percent, and the use of animals has recently been referred to as “a cliff over which people push bales of money.”

One of the most common experimental techniques used on dogs is known as “oral gavage,” used to force animals to ingest substances they otherwise would refuse. The scientific literature, such as this 2015 study from the Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods, defines it as “a technique for delivering a substance directly into the stomach and is frequently used to administer test compounds in research and toxicity testing.”

This is the same hideous technique that is used to make foie gras, by force-feeding a bird, duck, or goose to the point that its liver enlarges to such massive proportions that the animal suffers excruciating pain before death. So cruel is the procedure that many cities around the world — from San Francisco to São Paulo — have banned the sale of foie gras altogether. But the technique continues to be permitted, and widely used, on dogs in laboratories across the U.S.

As loose and permissive as this legal framework is, these standards are often flagrantly ignored by many dog breeding and experimentation corporations — with little consequence. Dogs are often mangled, tortured, and killed through sadistic abuse, reckless experimentation, or just sheer negligence. 

Beagles Preferred for Experiments

The dog breed which corporate breeders and research labs prefer is the beagle. In a dark and twisted irony, what makes them such beloved and kind animals, and particularly well suited for households with small children, is precisely what dooms them to an existence of suffering as objects of experimentations. The National Institutes of Health’s poorly named Office of Research Integrity states the blunt truth: “Most of the dogs used in research are beagles due to their convenient size and docile nature.”

The neuroscience professor who once experimented on dogs and now regrets it, Hansen, wrote in his op-ed, “Of all the animals used in research, subjecting dogs to invasive experiments is especially condemnable because humans have selectively bred dogs to unconditionally love the very people who sometimes visit abuses upon them.” That is especially true of beagles, because of how kind, loving, and thus malleable they are.

About such experimentation, Hansen wrote, “After three decades, I’m still ashamed to say I was once convinced to participate in this betrayal.” And he describes how his training in experimenting on and then killing dogs went back to medical school:

Back in medical school, I was instructed to cut apart and kill dogs — a Golden Retriever and a black Lab — for physiology demonstrations and surgical practice. In the latter case, we were made to perform weekly surgeries on the same dogs until the end of the lesson and until, frankly, the dogs couldn’t take any more of the mutilations and we put them out of their misery. I did it, qualms of conscience notwithstanding, because I was told it was “necessary.”

Increasingly, shelter mutts are also often used, as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals found as part of an investigation it conducted: “PETA’s undercover investigation inside the laboratories of the University of Utah revealed that the school was purchasing homeless dogs and cats from local shelters for use in invasive, painful, and often deadly experiments.” But in the world of corporate breeders, beagles remain the object of choice. Scientific literature, for decades, has bluntly discussed the attributes of beagles that make them ideal for experimentation:

Jeremy Beckham, a research associate with PETA’s Laboratory Investigations Department, wrote a definitive history of how beagles became, during the Cold War, the breed of choice to treat as objects for experimentation, with virtually no limits on the suffering and torture to which they were subjected.

In 1952, he wrote, “Experimenters at the University of Utah Radiobiology Laboratory injected a beagle known only as ‘T0P5’ with a radioactive and highly toxic isotope of plutonium. The dose that was given to T0P5 – more than 3 microcuries per kilogram – was 1,620 times the recommended maximum amount for human exposure.” Twenty-four hours later, ToP5, only 33 months old, was killed.

That began a huge spate of experimentation with and killing of beagles. Over the next several decades, the U.S. government spent $200 million — a large sum for those years — on injecting dogs with radiation. As Beckham noted, “Between the years of 1952 and 1983, federally funded radiation research killed more than 7,000 beagles in laboratories located in six locations throughout the United States: University of Utah, University of California-Davis, Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, the Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Washington state, the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in New Mexico, and Colorado State University.”

These gruesome experiments, like most dog experimentation today, produced almost no scientific value. As Beckham documents, “Epidemiological and clinical studies during this same timeframe provided us with much more meaningful data about the dangers of ionizing radiation.” But it started the trend of breeding beagles into life in order to use them for all forms of experimentation, and then dispense with them when done.

April 1956 article in Mechanix Illustrated on the University of Utah’s beagle experimentation program

A 1962 academic paper entitled “Adult Beagles. Radiation Research”

Even as dogs have become beloved pets in the U.S., treated as members of the family, with harsh punishments for those who abuse them, the behavior of corporate and academic entities that subject dogs to gruesome experimentations has barely changed. It’s a strange hypocrisy: Individuals may not abuse these animals, but corporations can.

One stirring video excerpt, provided to The Intercept by Beckham from a PETA investigation into Liberty Research Inc., shows how dogs, and cats, are treated as inanimate laboratory objects who, once their usefulness runs arounds, have their lives extinguished with the casualness of how one tosses a used paper towel into a trash can:

That gratuitous and indescribably cruel experimentation on beagles is as barbaric as ever is illustrated by this opening paragraph from Craig Masilow’s 2015 exposé in the Houston Press:

The purpose-bred laboratory beagle is a remarkably versatile animal. It can be used to ingest a toxic compound until it dies and to ascertain human safety guidelines for pesticides. Its heart, brain and prostate are easily accessible for cancer studies. It is bred to be docile and obedient, and, if necessary, it can be purchased sans working vocal cords. For around $700, you get a 33-pound specimen that needs no more than 8 square feet of kennel space, per federal law.

The group Rescue Freedom Project is devoted to rescuing beagles and other dogs from research labs. This video excerpt shows the first dog they ever rescued — a beagle who had been “devocalized” — as she steps on grass for the first time in her life, in 2010, after having spent her life being experimented on. The trauma is palpable, as one would expect:

Lax regulatory enforcement

The federal legal standards in the U.S. for ensuring humane treatment during experimentation are incredibly permissive, yet they are still frequently violated by corporations and academic facilities. And when these laws are violated, virtually nothing happens to the offenders, even when the violations are egregious and result in severe suffering, or even death, for the dogs.

Federal oversight of breeders and research facilities has been notoriously lax for years, to the point where penalties for even the most egregious abuses are systematically reduced to such a low level that they barely register. This laxity has worsened in the Trump era, with the new Republican administration placing more agricultural industry executives at the helm of oversight agencies than ever before.

The inspector general found that the Animal Care Unit “did not follow its own criteria in closing at least 59 cases that involved grave (e.g., animal deaths) or repeat welfare violations.” Even when violators were punished, the agency ensured that the punishments were so trivial that they would inflict no real consequences.

At times, the inspector general report documented, “some violators that committed grave violations only received official warning letters,” and even where violations “were mostly either serious (e.g., compromise the health and well-being of animals) or grave (e.g., result in animal deaths), violators were offered penalties reduced to between 57 and 97 percent of AWA’s authorized maximum penalty per violation, or 86 percent on average.”

The USDA has been notoriously permissive, for decades, when it comes to corporate abusers of dogs for research purposes. In 1995, the inspector general found that “dealers and other facilities had little incentive to comply with AWA because monetary penalties were, in some cases, arbitrarily reduced and often so low that violators regarded them as a cost of doing business.”

A decade later, nothing changed: Matters were just as grim, as the 2005 inspector general report found that “in addition to reducing the penalty by 75 percent, APHIS offered other concessions — making penalties basically meaningless. Violators continued to consider the monetary stipulation as a normal cost of business, rather than a deterrent for violating the law.” In 2010, still nothing had changed: “an OIG audit of problematic dealers found that APHIS’ enforcement process was ineffective, and the agency was misusing its own guidelines to lower penalties for AWA violators.”

As The Intercept has previously reported, much of this lax regulation in the context of industrial abuse of animals is the result of the revolving door form of legalized corruption that dominates so much of Washington. As our reporting noted, “The USDA is typically dominated by executives from the very factory farm industries that are most in need of vibrant regulation.”

President Donald Trump’s appointee to head the USDA, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, has extensive ties to the agribusiness sector he’s now supposed to oversee and regulate, a history of lax enforcement of industry rules, and substantial contributions from corporations over which his department exercises regulatory supervision. It is thus unsurprising that the USDA, early in 2017, “abruptly removed inspection reports and other information from its website about the treatment of animals at thousands of research laboratories, zoos, dog breeding operations and other facilities,” according to the Washington Post.

The USDA’s own data shows that enforcement of animal welfare laws is plummeting during the Trump era. The amount of civil penalties assessed, for instance, went from $3.8 million in fiscal year 2016, to only $467,150 in fiscal year 2017. The numbers for 2018 are on par to be far worse still:

To the extent that there are bills pending in Congress on this enforcement scheme, many of them would actually weaken, rather than strengthen, the already permissive regime. Just last week, according to the Animal Welfare Institute, “Representative David Rouzer (R-NC) introduced an amendment to absolve experimental laboratories of the very minimal requirement for an annual inspection by the USDA to ensure compliance with the basic animal care standards of the Animal Welfare Act. If approved, research facilities would only have to submit to USDA oversight of their use of animals once every three years.”

It is thus virtually impossible to imagine this enforcement scheme improving under the Trump administration. Indeed, it appears highly likely, if not inevitable, that it will get even worse.

Rescue operation at Ridglan

According to its 2017 report filed with the USDA, Ridglan Farms is currently holding almost 4,000 dogs that are being “bred, conditioned, or held for use in teaching, testing, experiments, research, or surgery, but not yet used for such purposes.”

Using the narrow definitions of federal law, the company reported that the “number of animals upon which experiments, teaching, research, surgery, or tests were conducted involving accompanying pain or distress to the animals and for which appropriate anesthetic, analgesic, or tranquilizing drugs” is 79 (the definition of “accompanying pain or distress” includes only physical, not psychological, torment).

When DxE investigators arrived there last spring and looked at the cages, the first thing they noticed was how many dogs were exhibiting extreme psychological torment, including endless spinning. Many of the dogs, they say, had skin and foot conditions from walking on wire their entire lives. They decided to rescue three dogs. The video published by The Intercept details the investigation, rescue, and subsequent care for these dogs.

“Research beagles” in their Ridglan cages.

The rescue of these dogs saved them from a short but hideously painful life as lab objects. In the report published today, provided in advance to The Intercept, DxE explains, “Ridglan says on their website, ‘We do not conduct toxicology studies or studies which require euthanasia at the conclusion of the study.’” But the company does not deny, and to The Intercept refused to provide comment, that it sells dogs to universities and other researchers who do use them for toxicology studies and kill them when the study is concluded.

As DxE detailed, some of the most horrifying experiments imaginable, along with post-experimentation killing, are common in research laboratories, meaning that there is at least a strong possibility that Ridglan has sent thousands of dogs to brutal ends. Common industry-wide experiments, as DxE describes them, include:

• Poisoned with artificial sweeteners. In a 2015 study by food giant Cargill, dogs were given large doses of a new artificial sweetener, which caused the male dogs’ testicles to shrink. All dogs were killed at the end of the study.

• Infected with heartworm. In a 2016 study at Auburn University, dogs were infected with heartworm larvae to the test the relative efficacy of commercial heartworm treatments. Five months after the infection, the dogs were killed.

• Convulsions from synthetic cannabis. In a 1987 study at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, dogs were forced to ingest nabilone, a synthetic cannabinoid, until some experienced convulsions and died.

• Force-fed commercial laundry detergent. In a 1974 study by the Lovelace Foundations, dogs were forced to ingest large amounts of commercial laundry detergent. Some vomited blood and died.

One of the dogs rescued from Ridglan was blind, though an ophthalmologist was unable to determine what caused it. Another had “mangled internal organs” that, according to DxE, were the apparent result of some sort of surgical procedure. The veterinarian who operated on her told DxE activists she was shocked and had never seen something like that.

All dogs have since recovered, but they also exhibit symptoms of trauma, including fearfulness and extreme separation anxiety. The blind dog in particular continues to spin around reflexively. While the physical pain and torment from experimentation is obviously severe, the psychological trauma for dogs kept in isolation after having been bred to need human companionship can be even worse.

Legislative and other solutions

As grim as all of this is, there are rational grounds for believing that reform is possible. As a 2015 Pew Research Center poll found, “The general public is closely divided when it comes to the use of animals in research: 47% favor the practice, while a nearly equal share (50%) oppose it.” That was for all animals, including rats and fish. Given the widespread sympathies for dogs in the U.S., the percentage opposing their use in experimentation is almost certainly far higher.

More interestingly still, animal rights have become a far less ideological cause than they once were perceived as being. The group White Coat Waste has tried to bridge that ideological gap by emphasizing a ban on taxpayer-funded animal experimentation, a posture that would enable liberals and conservatives to unite. Given that publicly funded animal experimentation composes a large bulk of such experiments in the U.S., that could go a long way to eliminating this cruelty. One poll commissioned by White Coat Waste found that a majority of Americans (60 percent) favor such a ban.

The promise of this approach is reflected in the increasingly bipartisan, trans-ideological nature of animal rights activism. Late last week, a right-wing GOP House member, Mike Bishop of Michigan, joined with Democrat Jimmy Panetta of California, introduced a law to ban the use of cats in all taxpayer-funded animal research. As CNN put it, the bill would “stop the Department of Agriculture from using cats and kittens in painful experiments.”

https://twitter.com/RepMikeBishop/status/995075508462391299

While the Pew poll found some greater support among conservatives and Republicans for animal experimentation, the differences are modest, far less than what one finds on many highly divisive political questions in the U.S.:

Some states have begun to enact laws severely restricting how animal experimentation can be used. Several, for instance, now ban animal testing for “testing cosmetics and personal care items” when an alternative is available.

DxE has drafted, and is currently promoting, what it calls Julie’s Law, named after the blind beagle it rescued from Ridglan. As Hsiung told The Intercept, “The Julie’s Law campaign is important for its own sake. Dogs are being brutalized right here at home in a way that’s just as evil as the dog meat festival in Yulin. But it’s also important because, if we succeed, it will be a legal breakthrough: giving a species of animal legal standing for the first time in history.”

Ultimately, a direct collision is coming between the rapidly evolving scientific understanding of the capacity of animals to suffer, emote, and possess self-consciousness (as Stephen Hawking and other leading neuroscientists recognized), and the legalized tolerance for mass animal abuse. This inevitable incompatibility was vividly highlighted by a remarkable written judicial opinion earlier this month, from a judge on New York’s highest court, which ultimately ruled that two chimpanzees do not possess legal standing as “persons” to petition for release. Nonetheless, in the case brought by the group Nonhuman Rights Project Inc., Judge Eugene Fahey explained that society’s treatment of animals is becoming increasingly untenable as a matter of ethics, morality, science, and law:

The inadequacy of the law as a vehicle to address some of our most difficult ethical dilemmas is on display in this matter. … The question will have to be addressed eventually. Can a non-human animal be entitled to release from confinement through the writ of habeas corpus? Should such a being be treated as a person or as property, in essence a thing? …

I agree with the principle that all human beings possess intrinsic dignity and value, and have, in the United States (and territory completely controlled thereby), the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus, regardless of whether they are United States citizens (see Boumediene v Bush, 553 US 723 [2008]), but, in elevating our species, we should not lower the status of other highly intelligent species. …

The record before us in the motion for leave to appeal contains unrebutted evidence, in the form of affidavits from eminent primatologists, that chimpanzees have advanced cognitive abilities, including being able to remember the past and plan for the future, the capacities of self-awareness and self-control, and the ability to communicate through sign language.

Chimpanzees make tools to catch insects; they recognize themselves in mirrors, photographs, and television images; they imitate others; they exhibit compassion and depression when a community member dies; they even display a sense of humor. Moreover, the amici philosophers with expertise in animal ethics and related areas draw our attention to recent evidence that chimpanzees demonstrate autonomy by selfinitiating intentional, adequately informed actions, free of controlling influences (see Tom L. Beauchamp, Victoria Wobber, Autonomy in chimpanzees, 35 Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 117 [2014]; see generally Jane Goodall, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior 15-42 [1986]). …

The reliance on a paradigm that determines entitlement to a court decision based on whether the party is considered a “person” or relegated to the category of a “thing” amounts to a refusal to confront a manifest injustice. Whether a being has the right to seek freedom from confinement through the writ of habeas corpus should not be treated as a simple either/or proposition. The evolving nature of life makes clear that chimpanzees and humans exist on a continuum of living beings. Chimpanzees share at least 96% of their DNA with humans. They are autonomous, intelligent creatures. To solve this dilemma, we have to recognize its complexity and confront it. …

The issue whether a nonhuman animal has a fundamental right to liberty protected by the writ of habeas corpus is profound and far-reaching. It speaks to our relationship with all the life around us. Ultimately, we will not be able to ignore it. While it may be arguable that a chimpanzee is not a “person,” there is no doubt that it is not merely a thing.

The work of animal rights activists is forcing us to confront what we would rather avert our gaze away from — systematic abuse, torture, and unspeakable cruelty. It is increasingly difficult to ignore the ethical questions all of this presents. As Fahey put it, “Ultimately, we will not be able to ignore it.”

Top photo: A “research dog” in its cage at Ridglan Farms Inc.

Correction: May 18, 2018, 11 a.m.
An earlier version of this story misidentified Rep. Jimmy Panetta of California as a Republican; he’s a Democrat. It has been updated.

The post Inside the Barbaric U.S. Industry of Dog Experimentation appeared first on The Intercept.

Six animal rights activists are facing felony charges, filed on Wednesday by a Utah prosecutor, stemming from an undercover investigation into abusive conditions on a large turkey farm. The criminal complaint includes two felony theft charges that carry possible prison terms of five years each.

The six defendants include Diane Gandee Sorbi, 62, a retiree who spends most of her time volunteering at animal shelters; Andrew Sharo, 24, a Ph.D. student in the biophysics program at Berkeley; and Wayne Hsiung, a lawyer and lead investigator.

In January 2017, the six activists entered a farm in Moroni, Utah, that supplies turkeys to Norbest, a large company that aggressively markets itself to the public as selling “mountain-grown” turkeys who are treated with particularly humane care. Its marketing materials feature bucolic photographs of Utah nature, designed to create an image that its turkeys are raised in fresh and healthy natural settings, accompanied by assurances that its “practices are humane” and ethical, “with the health and comfort of the birds of paramount importance.”

What the activists found at the farm was something radically different: tens of thousands of turkeys crammed inside filthy industrial barns, virtually on top of one another. The activists say the animals were suffering from diseases, infections, open wounds, and injuries sustained by pecking and trampling one another. Countless chicks and adult turkeys were barely able to stand, or were lying in their own waste, close to death.

They also say that, as a result of the filth in these barns, hepatitis and other viral diseases were rampant and spreading throughout the flock, which in turn caused the farm to put various antibiotics, including penicillin, into the barns’ water supply.

The mass or indiscriminate use of antibiotics by industrial farms poses a severe danger to the public health, since it breeds antibiotic-resistant bacteria into the human food supply. Between 70 to 80 percent of all antibiotics administered in the United States are given to farm animals as part of the agricultural industry.

Norbest expressly promises that its farms do “not use, nor does our drug policy permit, the routine use of medically important antibiotics.” (While the company admits that conditions at the farm were abusive and unacceptable, it denies that hepatitis was rampant and that antibiotics were indiscriminately administered.)

The activists, all volunteers with the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, filmed and photographed the conditions inside the farm. “In my 20 years of investigating animal abuse, I’ve never seen conditions this horrifying at a corporate farm,” Hsiung told the Intercept. “We saw animals that looked dead but were still breathing; animals, languishing, who had virtually been pecked to death; many animals collapsed on the ground in their own feces and filth. It was as bad as it gets.”

The activists also rescued three turkeys who were clearly suffering from extreme disease and injury and on the brink of death, part of a tactic known as “open rescue,” in which activists choose a symbolic handful of animals from industrial farms who are close to death, provide them with veterinarian care, and then publicly post film of their recovery at a shelter.

The three birds removed from the farm have no commercial value, because they were virtually certain to die within days, if not hours. DxE activists estimate that up to 25 percent of animals at industrial farms die before they can make it to the slaughterhouse due to the conditions in which they are kept.

In November 2017, DxE published video and photographic findings from its investigation of the Norbest-supplying farm. The publishing of the investigation was highly embarrassing to Norbest, as the materials received substantial local press coverage.

The Salt Lake Tribune, the largest paper in Utah, published a large article with a horrific photograph at the top, describing the conditions shown in the facility as “shocking.” It noted that “Norbest is one of the largest marketing cooperatives in the United States, selling turkeys raised by some 40 Utah farmers. Combined, it produces 5 million turkeys annually.”

Local Fox stations from around the country broadcast a dramatic story from its Utah affiliate, which documented the abuses at the farm. “Video shows ‘horrific’ conditions at farm that sold turkeys nationwide,” the local Fox affiliate headline in Cleveland said, featuring the highly incriminating story that was broadcast on the nightly news program in Utah, in which a reporter stood outside one of the barns, pointing at it and describing how the turkeys found inside were “sick, disfigured, and even dead.”

The DxE investigation received national media coverage as well. One CBS News report, for instance, featured DxE’s findings that the turkeys were “packed shoulder-to-shoulder in ‘filthy industrial sheds,'” and that “many were diseased or suffering from injuries inflicted by other birds.” About DxE’s claim of mass antibiotic use, CBS noted: “Medical experts have said that practice may lead to people contracting antibiotic-resistant diseases.”

The CBS report also linked to a video, produced and published by DxE, which showed the conditions inside the facility as well as the rescue of the three turkeys. One of the rescued turkeys appeared to have a broken neck, but turned out instead to be suffering from a severe bacterial infection in her brain. Another was one-tenth the size of the average turkey, due to being severely malnourished and diseased. The third had open, untreated wounds all over her face from having been pecked.

So severe and horrifying was the abuse and disease documented by DxE that Norbest executives proclaimed themselves highly “disturbed” by what they saw. The Fox report filmed Norbest CEO and President Matthew Cook watching the video for the first time. Cook said he felt “deep disappointment” at what he saw, adding: “This just shouldn’t happen.”

Cook, while denying that hepatitis was rampant at the farm, also claimed that this facility had been cited by corporate executives for abuse in the past, and had been told that “unless they fix these things,” their operations would be suspended. After watching the video, the CEO said the company was considering “terminating the contract” with this facility.

The company then issued a formal statement on its site, proclaiming itself “deeply disappointed that our standards were not upheld by the farmer in question.” It also vowed that it “will re-examine every step in our training and inspection process to determine whether there is more we can do to guarantee our animal care standards are met.”

But DxE vehemently denies that there is anything aberrational about what they saw — other than the fact that, in this case, it was publicly exposed. Indeed, investigations of turkey farms by other groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, have found that these are standard conditions throughout the U.S.:

These gentle, intelligent birds spend five to six months on factory farms, where thousands of them are packed into dark sheds with no more than 3.5 square feet of space per bird. Turkeys are genetically bred to grow as fast as possible, and they often become crippled under their own weight.

Given that Norbest itself admits that the conditions revealed by DxE were horrifying, and given that it led to reforms, why would the activists be prosecuted for their investigation? And given that they took nothing of commercial value, why would they be prosecuted for felony theft charges that, aggregated, carry a possible punishment of 10 years in prison?

The answer almost certainly lies in recent rulings from federal courts that have killed the agricultural industry’s preferred weapon for both suppressing evidence of abuse and also silencing journalists and activists with criminal law: the so-called ag-gag laws, which made publishing videos of farm conditions that are taken as part of undercover operations a felony, punishable by years in prison.

In July 2017, a federal court struck down Utah’s “ag-gag” law as a violation of the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment; the law, said the court, was designed solely to “restrict speech related to agricultural operations.” When Utah decided not to appeal the ruling, the Salt Lake Tribune declared in its headline: “Utah’s ‘ag-gag’ law — which banned secret filming at farms — is dead.” Earlier this year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Idaho’s “ag-gag” law on similar grounds.

Those rulings left Utah — whose state government is notoriously dominated by its agricultural industry — without its most menacing weapon to punish people who expose abuses on factory farms. Charging them with felony theft instead appears crafted to perform the same function. “This new prosecution seems to be a clear attempt to perform an end run around the death of the ‘ag-gag’ law,” said Hsiung.

In February of this year, Norbest was purchased by Pitman Farms of California, a supplier of Whole Foods. As The Intercept reported last September, Pitman itself has its own struggles with accusations of abuse of animals at its farms.

But now that Norbest is part of Pitman, this appears to be a case where a corporate supplier of Whole Foods — which touts itself as selling the healthiest and most organic products — is pressing charges against people who exposed animal abuse and threats to the public health. Requests for comment submitted to Utah state’s attorneys office and Norbest were unanswered as of publication of this article.

All of this takes place in the context of a state whose government has been almost entirely captured and co-opted by the industry it is supposed to regulate. “This is not an area where the government merely fails to do its job to stop abuse, violence, and unethical behavior,” said Hsuing. “The government is in active collaboration with the industry that commits these crimes, forcing citizens to expose them.”

For their successful efforts to expose these abuses and force reforms, Hsuing and his five fellow activists now face prosecution and the possibility of prison terms. Thus appears the same dynamic seen in so many other American realms, from torture to illegal spying to Wall Street fraud: The most powerful actors responsible for the most egregious acts are immunized from consequences, while the only ones punished are the ones who expose them.

Correction: May 7, 2018
A previous version of this story misspelled Diane Gandee Sorbi’s last name. It has been updated.

Top photo: Image taken from the Norbest-supplying turkey farm in Moroni, Utah by DxE activists, January 2017.

The post Six Animal Rights Activists Charged With Felonies for Investigation and Rescue That Led to Punishment of a Utah Turkey Farm appeared first on The Intercept.

Over the last decade, thanks to a cascade of undercover exposés of factory farms and slaughterhouses by animal rights activists, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the horrors of industrial animal agriculture. Though it has received less attention than than the systematic torture of pigs and cows, perhaps no part of animal agriculture is more heinous than egg production, an industry in which hens are confined to excruciatingly small cages for the entirety of their tortured lives. As the Humane Society put it after an extensive investigation into the indescribable cruelties of this industry, “Perhaps the most abused farm animals, nearly 280 million laying hens in the United States are confined in barren wire battery cages so restrictive the birds can’t even spread their wings.”

As consumers have awoken to the barbaric conditions of the egg industry, they have begun to turn toward incrementally more humane alternatives, such as cage-free eggs, as well as truly humane options, such as eggs from pasture-raised hens at places like Vital Farms.

The market, as they say, is speaking. As Americans become more educated about the morally repellent practices of this industry, they are increasingly refusing to reward barbaric practices by buying eggs that are the byproduct of industrial torture. 

But in response, the powerful poultry industry — which long invoked principles of the “free market” to justify their torture-derived products being available to consumers — have now reversed course. With consumers choosing more humane egg products, lobbyists for the poultry industry are pushing laws that would force stores to carry their products even if doing so offends their moral sensibilities and ethical judgments.

In Iowa, the nation’s biggest egg-producing state, lawmakers, at the behest of the poultry lobby, are making their most brazen attempt yet to fight the tides of change: simply making it a legal requirement for grocery stores to carry inhumanely produced eggs. A new bill in the Iowa state legislature, overwhelmingly passed by the Iowa House of Representatives on Monday by a vote of 81-17, would force any Iowa grocery store that participates in the Women, Infants and Children federal food assistance program and sells what the bill refers to as “specialty eggs” to also stock “conventional eggs.” “Specialty eggs” are cage-free eggs, free-range eggs, or “enriched colony cage” eggs — eggs produced in larger cages with perches and other amenities in them. “Conventional eggs” are eggs from hens confined in battery cages.

The bill’s supporters frame the measure as a consumer choice issue, arguing that the most economically destitute Iowans deserve access to lower priced eggs. Animal welfare advocates view the motivation differently.

“These bills are designed to keep a dying industry afloat that consumers no longer want to support,” said Cody Carlson, an attorney at Mercy for Animals. “This is an industry that refuses to change in any meaningful way.”

In 2010, Carlson worked at two industrial egg farms in Iowa, covertly documenting the inhumane practices employed in egg production as an undercover investigator. He and his co-workers, he told The Intercept, would walk down vast rows of battery cages looking for mummified bird corpses stuck to the floors. The cages were about the size of a microwave, with seven to 10 hens crammed into each one. The floors were made of an abrasive wire mesh, so when birds died — often from thirst or starvation after their confinement had debilitated their muscles and bones, rendering them paralyzed — the live hens would stand on top of the decaying carcasses to give their feet some relief. Workers like Carlson were responsible for removing the trampled carcasses.

“We called it ‘pulling carpets,’” he said.

“It was common at the places I worked to find hens whose wings, legs, necks, and prolapsed ova became caught in the wires, condemning them to excruciating, prolonged deaths by dehydration or trampling by their cage-mates,” Carlson told The Intercept in an email. The “ova” that he refers to is the chicken equivalent of a uterus, which commonly prolapses because they are bred to produce so many eggs. “When I pointed this out to my supervisor and offered to help untangle some of the hens, I was told this wasn’t our job and should wait until they died to remove them,” Carlson added.

The cages Carlson worked among were stacked 12 feet high and extended for 200 yards. The hens were so tightly packed that each one had less floor space than the surface of an iPad upon which to spend her entire life. They couldn’t spread their wings, and by the time they were a year old, “they are raw and featherless from rubbing up against each other and the cage wires,” Carlson noted. He added:

With nothing to do all day, the birds would naturally begin pecking each other out of boredom. Rather than alleviate their stress by giving them more space, the industry’s response is to ‘debeak’ them, painfully severing the ends of their beaks (which are filled with nerve endings) with a hot iron. With this procedure, they still go mad from mental and physical deprivation, but lack the ability to act out.

Because male chickens don’t lay eggs and aren’t bred to grow as fast as broiler hens, they are useless to the industry. Typically, they are tossed into a machine that grinds them alive or are tossed into a large plastic bag where they are left to suffocate.

The two facilities Carlson worked in were not marginal, fly-by-night operations; they were owned by two of the biggest egg producers in the country. The conditions he witnessed on a daily basis are typical of the industry.

It would be a challenge to purposely design torture methods that would inflict more pain and suffering on hens than those used at the largest industrial egg factories in the U.S. This has been one of the most challenging issues of animal cruelty to arouse public concern, because chickens are commonly perceived to be less intelligent and less emotionally complex than dogs, pigs, or even cows, making it somehow more morally justified, or at least less personally painful, to inflict excruciating pain on them for life. Precisely for that reason, the standard practices at egg farms are among the most savage and torturous in the animal farm industry.

One undercover video produced by Mercy for Animals revealed such shocking images that the company, Eggland’s Best, announced it was “setting a goal of working with our suppliers and customers to transition to 100 percent cage-free eggs by 2025,” and claimed it “has been at the forefront of egg industry best practices in a number of areas, including food safety, bird health, animal welfare, and 3rd party audit requirements.”

Despite some recent, isolated reforms, severe abuses throughout the industry remain commonplace, even as a full ban on battery cages for egg-laying hens took effect in the European Union in 2012. The Humane Society reports that “the vast majority of egg-laying hens in the United States are confined in battery cages.”

“There is no more tortured farm animal than a hen in a cage,” said Matthew O’Hayer, the founder of Vital Farms, a producer of certified humane, pasture-raised eggs. “If you visit a caged operation, there’s a chance you’ll never eat another egg in your life.”

Undercover investigators like Carlson have helped to bring this reality to consumers, creating a market for more humane alternatives and an appetite among voters for reform.

In 2008, California voters approved the nation’s first law specifically reforming conditions for hens in the egg industry. The ballot initiative, Proposition 2, passed in a landslide, and it prohibited the state’s egg producers from confining hens in enclosures too small to allow them to turn around, stand up, lie down, and stretch their limbs. The initiative did the same for pregnant sows and veal calves.

Before the measure went into effect in 2015, egg-laying hens in California were typically crammed into battery cages exactly like the ones Carlson worked with in Iowa. The new standards provided a modicum of relief to millions of California hens.

The expenses required to comply with the new regulations, however, put the state’s egg farmers at a competitive disadvantage with out-of-state producers that sold their eggs in California stores. So the following year, to level the playing field, the California legislature adopted a new law that extended those standards to all eggs sold in the state, regardless of whether they were laid in a California facility or shipped from another state. Together, the ballot initiative and its successor bill constituted the codification of a new consumer awareness of the conditions that prevail in industrial egg production, and a new public willingness to compel producers to adopt more humane practices.

Since Prop 2’s passage, elected officials in Iowa and other egg-producing states have been vigorously fighting to undercut those laws in order to preserve access to California’s massive consumer market for their own egg producers — without requiring them to invest in better conditions for their hens. In 2013, Iowa’s Republican Rep. Steve King proposed an amendment to the federal Farm Bill that would have prevented any state from imposing standards on the production of agricultural goods created in another state — a measure explicitly aimed at nullifying the standards set by California’s Prop 2. The amendment failed.

In 2016, Iowa’s governor, along with the attorneys general of five other states, sued California’s then-State Attorney General Kamala Harris and the Humane Society, seeking to block enforcement of Prop 2. The suit was dismissed at the district court level and on appeal, and the Supreme Court declined to hear it.

These successes have spurred advocates for ending animal cruelty to propose legislation for even more humane conditions. California’s legislators are now proposing to expand Prop 2’s minimum cage size yet further, and activists are pushing a new California ballot initiative that would require the state’s entire industry to go cage-free.

As the egg industry failed in its effort to undermine the voters’ will in California, the expanding national market for at least marginally more ethical eggs prompted 100 grocery store chains and dozens of chain restaurants and food manufacturers — Nestlé, McDonald’s, and Walmart among them — to pledge to abandon caged eggs over the next decade. This is an important development because these outlets collectively comprise 70 percent of consumer demand in the United States.

Caged egg producers and their political allies, running short on options to stem the contraction of the market for caged eggs, are now resorting to extreme measures, including the outright abandonment of the free-market principles they once heralded as sacrosanct. In Iowa, the strategy of these corporations now rests on overriding the demands of the market and empowering the government to dictate to stores what they must sell — in particular, barring them from refusing to sell eggs that are the products of grotesque cruelty.

It’s an ironic position, because this kind of intervention in the private sector was exactly what politicians like King accused the state of California of doing with the passage of Prop 2. O’Hayer, the Vital Farms founder, explained that when California voters adopted the animal rights measure, “the response was that we should let consumers make their own choices, and you can’t boss them around.” Now that consumers are choosing humane treatment of hens, that free-market principle has been kicked to the curb.

“It’s extremely hypocritical that Iowa’s factory farmers have pretended for a long time to care about protecting the free market,” said Chris Holbein of the Humane Society, “because now that the free market is turning against them and in favor of more responsible producers that are trying to do the right thing for consumers and animals, the factory producers want the government to force grocery stores to sell a product that is both unsafe and unethical.”

Becky Higgins, a small poultry farmer in Iowa, explained in the Des Moines Register that the bill just passed by the Iowa House will harm small farmers, the environment, consumer choice, consumer health, and humane treatment of animals — essentially, everyone except big industrial agriculture to which Iowa state legislators are subservient:

Our state leaders are poised to consider legislation that would hurt Iowa family farmers like myself and consumers who support farming practices that are sustainable, humane and ethical. … These factory farms harm not only the animals, but also the environment and the viability of our rural communities. As a proud Iowa egg producer and small sustainable and traditional family farmer, I know firsthand just how harmful industrial animal agriculture has been to the Iowa way of life.

Now, disastrous bills are being discreetly and quickly moved through the Iowa Legislature. Sponsored by lawmakers beholden to corporate agribusiness interests, this legislation would force most grocery stores to sell eggs from hens cruelly confined in tiny, barren battery cages. A growing number of farmers like myself have dedicated their lives to raising the standard of care for our animals and employees, while producing safe, wholesome products. Like me, many of my fellow farmers across the state have converted to cage-free systems, and others opted to never use cages from the beginning. Cage-free production is more humane, better for the environment, and produces a safer, tastier, healthier egg. …

In addition to supporting the continued use of inhumane battery cages, these dangerous bills will also increase food safety risks for Iowa families. Extensive research has shown higher rates of the harmful bacteria salmonella in eggs from caged hens versus eggs from cage-free hens. The stressful living conditions and inability of caged hens to move lowers their immune systems, making the transfer of disease more likely. A  major industry trade publication, Poultry World, wrote that “salmonella thrives in cage housing.” If the industry itself admits battery cage eggs are more dangerous, why on earth would they knowingly subject Iowa families to higher food safety risks?

For as long as I can remember, industrial animal agriculture has been trying to stop any regulation of extreme cruelty by saying that the “free market should decide,” yet now that the free market is rejecting the worst forms of factory farming practices, industrial agribusinesses is demanding that the government bail them out and take a share of the market away from more humane and responsible farmers.

The government has no place mandating that grocers must sell a product that family farmers, businesses and consumers reject.

Neither the bill’s legislative sponsors nor the Iowa Poultry Association responded to requests for comment.

Animal rights activists have succeeded in making greater sectors of the public aware of, and repelled by, the extreme cruelty and barbarism of industrial farming corporations in the U.S. But these corporations still wield one last weapon, and it is a potent one: the ability to use their financial muscle and lobbying power to dictate laws, particularly in farming states. Their latest ploy demonstrates how desperate they have become — but also how powerful they remain. 

Consumers have their own power: their refusal to reward industrial farms and corporations for imposing gratuitous and incomprehensible suffering on living beings by purchasing their products. That is now one of the primary fronts animal rights activists view as a key to ensuring more humane treatment for animals in the U.S. and abroad.

Top photo: Chickens stand in their cages at a large industrial egg production farm in Pennsylvania. About 96 percent of eggs sold in the United States come from hens who live in the so-called battery cages from the day they’re born until their egg-laying days end 18 to 24 months later.

The post Consumers Are Revolting Against Animal Cruelty — So the Poultry Industry Is Lobbying for Laws to Force Stores to Sell Their Eggs appeared first on The Intercept.

An Oakland slaughterhouse, Saba Live Poultry, was occupied last weekend by more than 200 people, protesting the atrocious conditions in which animals are kept before being slaughtered. Oakland police arrested 23 people and charged them with trespassing, for entering the facility, filming abuses, and removing at least three animals for rescue.

Activists described seeing intense suffering, abuse, and cruelty. Video images — from the short film above produced by The Intercept — confirm their accounts. Live bunnies were standing atop the rotting carcasses of other rabbits. Chickens were stuffed into cages so tiny that they were prevented from breathing. Still-living quails and chicks had been thrown into trash cans along with dead ones. And many animals, who had not been given food or water for days, were cannibalizing one another in cages in a desperate, instinctive attempt to survive.

One of the activists, Priya Sawhney of Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, said that walking onto the kill floor was “one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen in my life. We saw bodies of animals on the floor, bloodied heads of chicken, animal feet, blood everywhere.” She added, “In one of the trash cans I looked in, there were dead quail along with quails still alive, one of which I picked up to rescue.”

Animals aren't trash. pic.twitter.com/wtMbDuatah

— Mercy For Animals (@MercyForAnimals) October 31, 2017

At least three animals — a rabbit, a quail, and a lamb — were rescued, brought to a veterinarian for medical care, and are now recovering at a shelter. The police prevented more animals from being rescued by barring re-entry and by arresting almost two dozen activists.

Another protester, Samer Masterson, a 23-year-old software engineer, described the scene as “disgusting,” even for someone like him who has seen dozens of equally horrific abuses at factory farms. “When I walked onto the kill floor, I wanted to throw up. The stench was overwhelming.” When looking around, he said, “all I saw were buckets full of dismembered legs and wings and heads — it look like a scene from a horror film — and it’s just down the road from where I live.”

As atrocious as the conditions were, the activists said they are no worse than the standard factory farms run by large corporations. If anything, said Sawhney, the country’s largest industrial farms are worse, because the mass scale of slaughter and abuse, where all the abuse and killing are mechanized, makes it easier to remove human conscience from the equation.

Perpetrated by the egg and poultry industries, debeaking is to painfully cut off the tip of a bird’s beak, usually with a hot blade ?? pic.twitter.com/JLTR0lycXC

— Mercy For Animals (@MercyForAnimals) October 30, 2017

Though confronting such abuse was traumatic, Sawhney said that both the size of the protest, and the diversity of the participants, made it unique, foretelling a growing and more potent animal rights movement. “Just a few years ago, we would get 10, maybe 20, people participating in a risky DxE action like this. Now we have more than 200 people actively participating.”

Sawhney was part of a team composed exclusively of activists of color who rescued several distressed and abused animals from Saba. She described how her experience in post-9/11 America, as a Sikh-American from the Punjab region in India, led her to animal rights activism.

“It was very difficult for my family,” she said, recalling that she was often called a “terrorist.” During that era, “I wish someone did something, I wished that someone used their voice to say ‘this is wrong,'” Sawhney explained. “The reason I’m an animal rights activist, and the reason I speak up for animals today, is because of those moments when I felt really scared, when I felt attacked for not being like everyone else.”

Masterson is a Lebanese-American who was raised in the Muslim faith. In an interview with The Intercept, he explained why the principles and values instilled in him by that faith, as well as his experiences as an Arab-American, led him to his devotion to animal rights: “A core tenet of Islam is to treat others compassionately. People generally have compassion toward animals, but our actions aren’t consistent with that.”

Worse, Masterson said, is this fundamental notion at the heart of animal abuse that “humans are superior to animals and therefore have the right to impose gratuitous suffering. What’s the basis for this claimed ‘right’?” He added:

I experienced a lot of racism growing up, which opened me up to other groups that went through same experiences — including other marginalized humans. But this also applies to animals. I realized they aren’t here for us, but rather are here with us — so it’s our moral right to take care of the downtrodden. That’s another big part of Islam: the mandate to do charity work and help the poor. This applies to animals as much as it does to humans.

All of the activists who spoke to The Intercept agreed that support for animal rights is growing rapidly around the U.S. “I think it will be one of the big causes of my generation,” the 23-year-old Masterson said.

Not only are protests far larger than even five years ago, but so is online interest in animal abuse, veganism, and consumer demands against the worst corporate abusers. Animal rights is clearly on the brink of becoming a fully mainstream cause.

The latest protest, aside from generating more visibility, seems likely to produce concrete and immediate reforms. Rather than responding with anger and recrimination, Saba’s owner agreed to sit down for a vegan lunch with one of DxE’s lead organizers, Wayne Hsiung (pictured below during his arrest last weekend), to discuss needed reforms.

The Saba owner himself is an immigrant to the U.S. who works for the rights of refugees, has adopted three children since moving to the U.S., and, despite his ownership of a slaughterhouse, insists that he is committed to ending suffering, including for animals. Hsiung says his commitment to reforms, and particularly to instituting practices far superior to industrial farms, appears genuine: He has already ordered a sweeping cleanup of the slaughterhouse and has agreed to periodically allow inspections and to release animals to DxE.

In many ways, this latest protest and the impressive results it is producing are a poignant reflection of the trajectory of animal rights generally — from a fringe and widely mocked movement stereotyped as the exclusive domain of coddled left-wing activists into one that is now resonating with people of all types, who — as a matter of basic human conscience — are beginning to grasp and be horrified by the widespread, wholly unnecessary and inexcusable cruelty and suffering that animal agriculture is creating.

The post Rescue at Oakland Slaughterhouse Shows New, Potent Tactics of Growing Animal Rights Movement appeared first on The Intercept.

FBI agents are devoting substantial resources to a multistate hunt for two baby piglets that the bureau believes are named Lucy and Ethel. The two piglets were removed over the summer from the Circle Four Farm in Utah by animal rights activists who had entered the Smithfield Foods-owned factory farm to film the brutal, torturous conditions in which the pigs are bred in order to be slaughtered.

While filming the conditions at the Smithfield facility, activists saw the two ailing baby piglets laying on the ground, visibly ill and near death, surrounded by the rotting corpses of dead piglets. “One was swollen and barely able to stand; the other had been trampled and was covered in blood,” said Wayne Hsiung of Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), which filmed the facility and performed the rescue. Due to various illnesses, he said, the piglets were unable to eat or digest food and were thus a fraction of the normal weight for piglets their age.

Rather than leave the two piglets at Circle Four Farm to wait for an imminent and painful death, the DxE activists decided to rescue them. They carried them out of the pens where they had been suffering and took them to an animal sanctuary to be treated and nursed back to health.

This single Smithfield Foods farm breeds and then slaughters more than 1 million pigs each year. One of the odd aspects of animal mistreatment in the U.S. is that species regarded as more intelligent and emotionally complex — dogs, dolphins, cats, primates — generally receive more public concern and more legal protection. Yet pigs – among the planet’s most intelligent, social, and emotionally complicated species, capable of great joy, play, love, connection, suffering and pain, at least on a par with dogs — receive almost no protections, and are subject to savage systematic abuse by U.S. factory farms.

At Smithfield, like most industrial pig farms, the abuse and torture primarily comes not from rogue employees violating company procedures. Instead, the cruelty is inherent in the procedures themselves. One of the most heinous industry-wide practices is one that DxE activists encountered in abundance at Circle Four: gestational crating.

Where that technique is used, pigs are placed in a crate made of iron bars that is the exact length and width of their bodies, so they can do nothing for their entire lives but stand on a concrete floor, never turn around, never see any outdoors, never even see their tails, never move more than an inch. That was the condition in which the activists found the rotting piglet corpses and the two ailing piglets they rescued.

Piles of dead and rotting piglets are piled up behind a sow, who is wedged into a crate so tightly that she cannot move away from the mess at Smithfield-owned Circle Four Farm in Utah.

Female pigs give birth in this condition. They are put in so-called farrowing crates when they give birth, and their piglets run underneath them to suckle and are often trampled to death. The sows are bred repeatedly this way until their fertility declines, at which point they are slaughtered and turned into meat.

The pigs are so desperate to get out of their crates that they often spend weeks trying to bite through the iron bars until their gums gush blood, bash their heads against the walls, and suffer a disease in which their organs end up mangled in the wrong places, from the sheer physical trauma of trying to escape from a tiny space or from acute anxiety (called “organ torsion”).

So cruel is the practice that in 2014, Canada effectively banned its usage, as the European Union had done two years earlier. Nine U.S. states, most of which host very few farms, have banned gestational crating (in 2014, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, with his eye on the GOP primary in farm-friendly Iowa, vetoed a bill that would have made his state the 10th).

But in the U.S. states where factory farms actually thrive, these devices continue to be widely used, which means a vast majority of pigs in the U.S. are subjected to them. The suffering, pain, and death these crates routinely cause were in ample evidence at Smithfield Foods, as accounts, photos, and videos from DxE demonstrate.

FBI raids animal sanctuaries

Under normal circumstances, a large industrial farming company such as Smithfield Foods would never notice that two sick piglets of the millions it breeds and then slaughters were missing. Nor would they care: A sick and dying piglet has no commercial value to them.

Yet the rescue of these two particular piglets has literally become a federal case — by all appearances, a matter of great importance to the Department of Justice. On the last day of August, a six-car armada of FBI agents in bulletproof vests, armed with search warrants, descended upon two small shelters for abandoned farm animals: Ching Farm Rescue in Riverton, Utah, and Luvin Arms in Erie, Colorado.

These sanctuaries have no connection to DxE or any other rescue groups. They simply serve as a shelter for sick, abandoned, or otherwise injured animals. Run by a small staff and a team of animal-loving volunteers, they are open to the public to teach about farm animals.

The attachments to the search warrants specified that the FBI agents could take “DNA samples (blood, hair follicles or ear clippings) to be seized from swine with the following characteristics: I. Pink/white coloring; II. Docked tails; III. Approximately 5 to 9 months in age; IV. Any swine with a hole in right ear.”

The FBI agents searched the premises of both shelters. They demanded DNA samples of two piglets they said were named Lucy and Ethel, in order to determine whether they were the two ailing piglets who had been rescued weeks earlier from Smithfield.

A representative of Luvin Arms, who insisted on anonymity due to fear of the pending criminal investigation, described the events. The FBI agents ordered staff and volunteers to stay away from the animals and then approached the piglets. To obtain the DNA samples, the state veterinarians accompanying the FBI used a snare to pressurize the piglet’s snout, thus immobilizing her in pain and fear, and then cut off close to two inches of the piglet’s ear.

The piglet’s pain was so severe, and her screams so piercing, that the sanctuary’s staff members screamed and cried. Even the FBI agents were so sufficiently disturbed by the resulting trauma, that they directed the veterinarians not to subject the second piglet to the procedure. The sanctuary representative recounted that the piglet who had part of her ear removed spent weeks depressed and scared, barely moving or eating, and still has not fully recovered. The FBI “receipt” given to the sanctuaries shows they took DNA samples “from swine.”

Several volunteers at one of the raided animal shelters said they were followed back to their homes by FBI agents, who dramatically questioned them in front of family members and neighbors. And there is even reason to believe that the bureau has been surveilling the activists’ private communications regarding the rescue of this piglet duo.

The FBI specified as part of its search that it was seeking DNA samples from piglets they said were named “Lucy” and “Ethel.” But those were not the names the activists used when publicly discussing the rescue of the two piglets. In their videos about the rescue, they called the pair “Lily” and “Lizzie.” Lucy and Ethel were code names the activists used internally, suggesting that agents were surveilling the activists’ communications — either electronically or through informants — in an effort to find the two piglets and build a criminal case against the group.

Subsequent events confirmed that this show of FBI force was designed to intimidate the sanctuaries, which played no role in the rescue. Weeks after the FBI’s execution of the two search warrants, Luvin Arms — in the midst of an interview with The Intercept — received a telephone call from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, claiming the agency had received “a complaint” that the sanctuary lacked the legally required licenses for animal shelters that are open to the public. “We had never had an FBI visit or a USDA call about licenses, and now suddenly, within weeks, both happened,” the sanctuary representative said.

Retaliation for exposing cruel treatment

What has vested these two piglets with such importance to the FBI is that their rescue is now part of what has become an increasingly visible public campaign by DxE and other activists to highlight the barbaric suffering and abuse that animals endure on farms like Circle Four. Obviously, the FBI and Smithfield — the nation’s largest industrial farm corporation — don’t really care about the missing piglets they are searching for. What they care about is the efficacy of a political campaign intent on showing the public how animals are abused at factory farms, and they are determined to intimidate those responsible.

Deterring such campaigns and intimidating the activists behind them is, manifestly, the only goal here. What made this piglet rescue particularly intolerable was an article that appeared in the New York Times days after the rescue, which touted the use of virtual reality technology by animal rights activists to allow the public to immerse in the full experience of seeing what takes place in these companies’ farms. The article featured a photograph of the DxE activists rescuing the piglets from the Smithfield farm:

The Times article was published July 6. The search warrant against the sanctuaries was obtained the following month, in mid-August, and then executed on August 31. In the interim, the piglets had become stars of a clearly effective campaign against Smithfield Foods. 

In response to questions from The Intercept, Smithfield insisted that it does not abuse its animals. But, as is typical for factory farms, the company offered little more then generalized denials, accompanied by vague accusations that the videos and photos the activists took are somehow “distorted.”

After they rescued the two piglets, the DxE activists did not try to hide what they had done: They did the opposite. They used a tactic known as “open rescue,” the purpose of which is to publicly detail what has been done to help the public understand the true nature of the abuses.

The activists wrote about the rescue in social media postings that went viral, detailing the horrific conditions they witnessed at Smithfield and describing the suffering of the piglets. They posted videos to Facebook and YouTube that they filmed of the farm and the rescue as it happened, with other videos showing Lily and Lizzie being treated at the sanctuaries and growing into happy, playful, healthy adolescents.

Video: Direct Action Everywhere

Plainly, the “crime” of these activists that has galvanized the FBI is not the “theft” of two dying piglets; it is political activism and investigative journalism, which exposes the cruelty and abuse at the heart of this powerful industry.

In response to a few media reports on the FBI raids at the sanctuaries, bureau spokesperson Sandra Barker told the Washington Post: “I can say that we were at the two locations conducting court-authorized activity related to an ongoing investigation. Because it’s ongoing, I’m not able to provide any more details at this time.”

To an industry feeling endangered by growing public disgust over conditions at industrial farms — driven by scandals within the meat, pork, and poultry sectors — Lily and Lizzie are political and journalistic threats. Animals like them are vital for enabling animal rights activists to demonstrate to the public in a visceral, personalized way that this industry generates massive profit by monstrously and unnecessarily torturing living beings who are emotionally complex and experience great suffering.

Government power abused to intimidate and punish activists

The Justice Department’s grave attention to a case of two missing piglets reflects how vigilantly the U.S. government uses extreme measures to protect the agricultural industry — not from unjust economic loss, violent crime, or theft, but from political embarrassment and accurate reporting that damages the industry’s reputation.

A sweeping framework of draconian laws — designed to shield the industry from criticism and deter and punish its critics — has been enacted across the country by federal and state legislatures that are captive to the industry’s high-paid lobbyists. The most notorious of these measures are the “ag-gag” laws, which make publishing videos of farm conditions taken as part of undercover operations a felony, punishable by years in prison.

Though many courts, including most recently a federal court in Utah, have struck down these laws as an unconstitutional assault on speech and press freedoms, they continue to be used in numerous states to harass and, in some cases, prosecute animal rights activists. As the Times article notes, these ag-gag laws are one reason activists are forced to turn to virtual reality: to show what really happens inside industrial farms without running the risk of prosecution.

Even more extreme and menacing is the federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. As I described previously when reporting on the arrest of two young activists — who faced 10 years in prison for freeing minks from farm cages before the animals could be sliced to death and turned into luxury coats — nonviolent animal rights activists are often designated as “terrorists” under the AETA and are treated in the court system as such, even when no human beings are hurt and the economic loss is minimal:

As is typical for lobbyist and industry-supported bills, the AETA passed with overwhelming bipartisan support (its two prime Senate sponsors were James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.) and then was signed into law by George W. Bush.

This “terrorism” law is violated if one “intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property (including animals or records) used by an animal enterprise … for the purpose of damaging or interfering with” its operations. If you do that — and note that only “damage to property” but not to humans is required — then you are guilty of “domestic terrorism” under the law.

Prior to the 2006 enactment of the AETA, animal rights activism that damaged property was already illegal under a 1992 federal law, as well as various state laws, and subject to severe punishments. The primary purpose of the new 2006 law was to expand the scope of criminal offenses to include plainly protected forms of political protest, and to heighten the legal punishments and intensify social condemnation by literally labeling animal-rights activists as “domestic terrorists.”

The factory farm industry and its armies of lobbyists wield great influence in the halls of federal and state power, while animal rights activists wield virtually none. This imbalance has produced increasingly oppressive laws, accompanied by massive law enforcement resources devoted to punishing animal activists even for the most inconsequential nonviolent infractions — as the FBI search warrant and raid in search of “Lucy and Ethel” illustrates.

The U.S. government, of course, has always protected and served the interests of industry. Beginning when most of the nation was fed by small farms, federal agencies have been particularly protective of agricultural industry. That loyalty has only intensified as family farms have nearly disappeared, replaced by industrial factory farms where animals are viewed purely as commodities, instruments for profit, and treated with unconstrained cruelty.

Lately, opposition is emerging from unusual places. Utah federal judge Robert J. Shelby, an Obama appointee who is a lifelong Republican, recently struck down the state’s ag-gag law on First Amendment grounds, noting in his ruling:

For as long as farmers have put food on American tables, the government has endeavored to support and protect the agricultural industry. … In short, governmental protection of the American agricultural industry is not new, and has taken a variety of forms over the last two hundred years. What is new, however, is the recent spate of state laws that have assumed an altogether novel approach: restricting speech related to agricultural operations.

As Shelby detailed, those ag-gag laws were not used until activists began having success in showing the public the true extent of cruelty that industrial farms impose on animals:

Nobody was ever charged under these [early ag-gag] laws, and for nearly two decades no new ag-gag legislation was introduced. That changed, however, after a series of high profile undercover investigations were made public in the mid to late 2000s.

To name just a few, in 2007, an undercover investigator at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company in California filmed workers forcing sick cows, many unable to walk, into the “kill box” by repeatedly shocking them with electric prods, jabbing them in the eye, prodding them with a forklift, and spraying water up their noses. A 2009 investigation at Hy-Line Hatchery in Iowa revealed hundreds of thousands of unwanted day-old male chicks being funneled by conveyor belt into a macerator to be ground up live.

That same year, undercover investigators at a Vermont slaughterhouse operated by Bushway Packing obtained similarly gruesome footage of days-old calves being kicked, dragged, and skinned alive. A few years later, an undercover investigator at E6 Cattle Company in Texas filmed workers beating cows on the head with hammers and pickaxes and leaving them to die. And later that year, at Sparboe Farms in Iowa, undercover investigators documented hens with gaping, untreated wounds laying eggs in cramped conditions among decaying corpses.

The publication of these and other undercover videos had devastating consequences for the agricultural facilities involved. The videos led to boycotts of facilities by McDonald’s, Target, Sam’s Club, and others. They led to bankruptcy and closure of facilities and criminal charges against employees and owners. They led to statewide ballot initiatives banning certain farming practices. And they led to the largest meat recall in United States history, a facility’s entire two years’ worth of production.

Over the next three years, sixteen states introduced ag-gag legislation.

In other words, both the legislative process and law enforcement agencies are being blatantly exploited — misused — to protect not the property rights but the reputational interests of this industry. Having the FBI — in the midst of real domestic terrorism threats, hurricane-ravaged communities, and intricate corporate criminality — send agents around the country to animal sanctuaries in search of DNA samples for two missing piglets may seem like overkill to the point of being laughable. But it is entirely unsurprising in the context of how law enforcement resources are used, and on whose behalf.

Smithfield Food’s defenses

It makes sense that Smithfield Foods would be petrified of the public learning of many of its practices. But in this particular case, they are specifically trying to hide the pure evils of gestational crates. This video, taken by an investigator with the Humane Society in 2012, shows the widespread but hideous reality of gestational crates at a Smithfield farm:

In response to the public controversy over this practice, generated by activists filming what was going on, Smithfield announced in 2012 that they would phase out gestational crating in 10 years — by 2022. They then claimed that by the end of 2017, they would transition completely to “group housing systems.” But as the DxE videos show, gestation crates are exactly what activists found in abundance when they visited Smithfield’s Circle Four.

Indeed, when Wayne Hsiung and DxE visited Circle Four over the summer, they saw no signs whatsoever of any construction or reform efforts to move away from gestational crates, Hsiung told the Intercept. As the videos show, Circle Four had thousands of pigs suffering in such crates. That was where the activists found the two piglets, close to death.

When Smithfield learned that The Intercept was reporting on these issues, a spokesperson emailed a statement and invited further questions. The statement claims that in response to DxE’s reporting, Smithfield “immediately launched an investigation and completed a third-party audit,” and “the audit results show no findings of animal mistreatment.”

This is a typical industry tactic: When they claim, as they almost always do, that their paid auditors discovered “no findings of animal mistreatment,” what they mean is that there was no evidence that their employees engaged in activities that corporate procedures explicitly prohibit (such as beating the animals or administering electric shock).

But what the audit does not do is ask whether the procedures themselves (such as gestational crating) are abusive and thus constitute “mistreatment.” Smithfield failed to provide a response to The Intercept’s follow-up questions about what it does and does not mean when their auditors claim no “mistreatment” was discovered; the company simply reiterated that “the animals observed on the farm by the audit team were in good condition, appeared comfortable, free of clinical disease, and showed no signs of fear or intimidation in the presence of people.” Simply review the DxE video above, and the featured photos showing what they found at Circle Four, to judge for yourself.

In its statement, Smithfield also accused the activists who rescued the two piglets of “risk[ing] the life of the animals they stole and the lives of the animals living on our farms by trespassing” — an odd claim from a company that plans to slaughter all of those same animals. When asked to specify how the activists endangered the lives of the sick animals they rescued, Smithfield told The Intercept that “the video’s creators violated Smithfield’s strict biosecurity policy, which prevents the spread of disease on farms.” The statement added: “The piglets were not ‘extremely ill’ or ‘on the verge of death.’ These piglets, along with other animals living on the farm, are well cared for throughout their lifetime.”

But in response, Hsiung told the Intercept: “Our activists use better biosecurity protocols than the company’s own employees, as evidenced by the dead, rotting piglets on the farm. Allowing baby animals to rot to death is, in fact, a serious violation of biosecurity and food safety. Taking photographs of animal cruelty is not.”

Smithfield also accused the activists of manipulating their film, claiming that “the video appears to be highly edited and even staged in an attempt to manufacture an animal care issue where one does not exist.” But Smithfield did not respond to this question from The Intercept about the staging allegation: “How would these activists stage hundreds of pigs in gestation crates and dozens of piglets rotting to death — all in virtual reality, no less? It would take a Hollywood blockbuster budget and the most sophisticated team of computer-generated imagery for that. What’s Smithfield’s theory about what they fabricated in this video?”

The only specifics Smithfield offered was the assertion that “based on the review of animal care experts, it appears piglets were moved from one section of the barn to another to support the inaccuracies and falsehoods described in the video by its creators.”

But Hsiung said: “The video speaks for itself. I don’t know how we can fake a rotting piglet.” Regarding the accusation that they moved piglets, he added: “I imagine what they are seeing is piglets in the wrong sort of pen, gestation rather than farrowing. But that is a testament to their own failed animal care practices. We were shocked and horrified, as well, to see piglets born and housed in inappropriate conditions that left them exposed to trauma.”

In sum, the industry has long responded to these videos — which they tried in the first instance to use their lobbying power to criminalize — by insisting that the videos are distorted. Yet they never specify what these supposed distortions are. Now that activists are using virtual reality technology, which allows the viewer to see everything the activists see, such claims are even more untenable than they were before.

Revolving door with agribusiness

A recent change in U.S. political discourse — spurred by events such as the 2008 financial crisis, the Occupy movement, and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign — is the increasingly common use of the words “oligarchy” and “plutocracy” to describe the country’s political system. Though dramatic, the terms, melded together, describe a fairly simple and common state of affairs: power exerted by and exercised for the exclusive benefit of a small group of people who wield the greatest financial power.

It is hard to imagine a more vivid illustration than watching FBI agents don bulletproof vests and execute DNA search warrants for Lily and Lizzie, all to deter and intimidate critics of a savage industry that funds politicians and the lobbyists that direct them.

Substantial attention has been paid over the last several years to the “revolving door” that runs Washington — industry executives being brought in to run the agencies that regulate their industries, followed by them returning to that industry once their industry-serving government work is done. That’s how Wall Street barons come to “regulate” banks, how factory owners come to “regulate” workplace safety laws, how oil executives come to “regulate” environmental protections — only to leave the public sector and return back to lavish rewards from those same industries for a job well done.

Though it receives modest attention, this revolving door spins faster, and in more blatantly sleazy ways, when it comes to the USDA and its mandate to safeguard animal welfare. The USDA is typically dominated by executives from the very factory farm industries that are most in need of vibrant regulation.

For that reason, animal welfare laws are woefully inadequate, but the ways in which they are enforced is typically little more than a bad joke. Industrial farming corporations like Smithfield know they can get away with any abuse or “mislabeling” deceit (such as misleading claims about their treatment of animals) because the officials who have been vested with the sole authority to enforce these laws — federal USDA officials — are so captive to their industry. Courts have repeatedly ruled that private individuals, animal rights groups, and even state authorities have no right to sue to enforce animal welfare laws, because the “exclusive authority” lies with the U.S. government, which has no real interest in actually enforcing those laws.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue on July 12, 2017, in Atlanta.

The current secretary of agriculture, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (pictured, right), is just one example, but he vividly highlights the revolving door form of legalized corruption that dominates this industry.

Perdue was raised on a Georgia row farm and obtained his doctorate in veterinary medicine. Despite those seemingly benign credentials, the factory farm industry celebrated the news of his nomination by President Donald Trump. The National Chicken Council, for instance, demanded that he be “confirmed expeditiously.” The enthusiasm was for good reason.

“Georgia was pretty friendly to food-industry interests during Perdue’s two terms,” Grub Street reported, and Perdue “took about $330,000 in contributions from Monsanto and other agribusinesses for his campaigns.” In 2009, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the lobbying group for genetically modified foods, named Perdue its “Governor of the Year” because, it said, “he has been a stalwart advocate of the biosciences in Georgia and truly understands the promise of our industry.” As Georgia governor, Perdue supported the rapid expansion of factory farm giant Perdue Farms (to which he has no familial relation), with its long history of allegations of animal abuse.

And Perdue has extensive ties to the agribusiness sector he’s now supposed to oversee and regulate. The firm of which he is the founding partner and his family owns and runs, Perdue Partners LLC, is an agribusiness at the heart of this industry:

After being confirmed, Perdue wasted little time lavishing his agribusiness industry with gifts. In February, the USDA “abruptly removed inspection reports and other information from its website about the treatment of animals at thousands of research laboratories, zoos, dog breeding operations and other facilities,” reported the Washington Post. Then, two senators who have received large sums from farmers and ranchers — Democrat Debbie Stabenow and Republican Pat Roberts — agitated for the recession of the Obama administration’s mild regulations on organic eggs, designed to improve conditions for chickens, and the Perdue-led USDA “put the new standard on hold and suggested that it might even be withdrawn.”

In sum, with industry insiders dominating the sole agency (USDA) with the authority to regulate factory farms, animals that are captive, abused, tortured, and slaughtered en masse have little chance, even when it comes to just applying existing laws with a minimal amount of diligence. The politics of the U.S. — including the fact that a key farm state, Iowa, plays such a central role in presidential elections — means there are massive forces arrayed behind factory farms, and very few in support of animal welfare.

Piglets are raised in cramped, filthy conditions at Smithfield-owned Circle Four Farm in Utah.

From fringe to the mainstream

But the animal rights movement, despite receiving relatively scant media attention and operating under the threat of federal prosecutions for terrorism, boasts some of the nation’s more effective, shrewd, and tenacious political activists. They have made significant strides in turning the public against the worst of the prevailing practices on these farms, and more generally, in forcing into the public consciousness the knowledge of how this industry imposes suffering, abuse, and torture on living beings on a mass and systematic scale, all to maximize profits. 

Just a decade ago, the cause of animal cruelty and exploitation was a fringe position, rarely appearing outside far-left circles. That has all changed, thanks largely to the efforts of these activists, many of whom have been imprisoned for their efforts. Most activists say that it was unimaginable even a decade ago for major newspaper columnists such as the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof or Frank Bruni to take up their cause, yet that’s precisely what they have done in a series of columns over the last several years.

“If you torture a single chicken and are caught, you’re likely to be arrested. If you scald thousands of chickens alive, you’re an industrialist who will be lauded for your acumen,” Kristof wrote in one 2015 column. He described the savagery of the process used to slaughter chickens by the millions and scornfully dismissed industry’s claim that no abuse or mistreatment was found by their auditors.

In a column the year before, Kristof detailed the barbarism and misleading claims that chickens are “humanely raised” at Perdue Farms — the company USDA Secretary Perdue helped to expand — and concluded: “Torture a single chicken and you risk arrest. Abuse hundreds of thousands of chickens for their entire lives? That’s agribusiness.”

And that’s to say nothing of the other significant costs from industrial farming. There are serious health risks posed by the fecal waste produced at such farms. And the excessive, reckless use of antibiotics common at factory farms can create treatment-resistant bacterial strains capable of infecting and killing humans. There is also increasing awareness that industrial farming meaningfully exacerbates climate problems, with some research suggesting that it produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined. Reviewing the meat industry in 2014, Kristof summarized what he learned this way:

Our industrial food system is unhealthy. It privatizes gains but socializes the health and environmental costs. It rewards shareholders — Tyson’s stock price has quadrupled since early 2009 — but can be ghastly for the animals and humans it touches.

Bruni wrote in a 2014 column headlined “According Animals Dignity” of “a broadening, deepening concern about animals that’s no longer sufficiently captured by the phrase ‘animal welfare.’” Instead of simply curbing the most egregious abuses, he wrote, a more principled awareness of the intrinsic worth and rights of animals is emerging: “an era of what might be called animal dignity is upon us.”

Some progress is indeed undeniable. Laws are being re-written to recognize that dogs and other pets are more than property; places such as Sea World and Ringling Brothers’ circuses can no longer feature imprisoned animals forced to perform; and some states are enacting laws criminalizing the worst extremes of animal cruelty.

One U.S. Senator, Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey, has placed animal rights protections as one of his legislative priorities. Booker, who has been a vegetarian since college and recently announced his transition to full veganism, has sponsored a spate of bills to fortify the rights of animals: from banning the selling of shark fins to limiting the legal uses of animals for testing to requiring humane treatment of animals in all federal facilities.

While he has been attacked by the New York Post for “animal rights extremism” after he announced his veganism, Booker now regularly and unflinchingly invokes the core principles of animal rights: “I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can. Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don’t align with my values.” Rather than these legislative efforts being scorned, a spokesman for Booker told the Intercept that “Sens. Merkley and Whitehouse have been reliable allies on animal testing and other efforts; the Shark Fin effort has a number of cosponsors as well; and Sens. Schatz, Markey, Warren, Feinstein, Blumenthal have been partners as well.”

The devastating costs of industrial farming and the mass torture and slaughter on which it depends — moral, spiritual, physical, environmental — are being documented in scholarly circles with increasing clarity. A group of public health specialists jointly wrote in a New York Times op-ed in May: “This sweeping change in meat production and consumption has had grave consequences for our health and environment, and these problems will grow only worse if current trends continue.”

In general, the core moral and philosophical question at the heart of animal rights activism is now being seriously debated: Namely, what gives humans the right or justification to abuse, exploit, and torture non-human species? If there comes a day when some other species (broadly defined) — such as machines — surpass humans in intellect and cognitive complexity, will they have a valid moral claim to treat humans as commodities whose suffering and death can be assigned no value?

The irreconcilable contradiction of lavishing love and protection on dogs and cats, while torturing and slaughtering farm animals capable of a deep emotional life and great suffering, is becoming increasingly apparent. British anthropologist Jane Goodall, in the preface to Amy Hatkoff’s groundbreaking book “The Inner World of Farm Animals,” examined the science of animal cognition and concluded: “Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear, and pain. They are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined … They are individuals in their own right.”

All of these changes have been driven by animal rights activists who, often at great risk to themselves, have forced the public to be aware of the savagery and cruelty supported through food consumption choices. That’s precisely why this industry is so obsessed with intimidating, threatening, and outlawing this form of activism: because it is so effective.

Dissidents are tolerated to the extent they remain ineffectual and unthreatening. When they start to become successful — that is, threatening to powerful interests — the backlash is inevitable. The tools used against them are increasingly extreme as their success grows.

To call the FBI’s actions in raiding these animal sanctuaries a profound waste of its resources is both an understatement and beside the point. The real short-term goal is to target those most vulnerable — volunteer-supported animal shelters — to scare them out of taking care of rescued animals. And the ultimate goal is to fortify and intensify a climate of intimidation and fear designed to deter animal rights activists from reporting on the horrifying realities of these factory farms.

There is a temptation to turn away from and ignore this mass suffering and cruelty because it’s so painful to confront, so much more pleasant to remain unaware of it. Animal rights activists are determined to prevent us from doing so, and we should all feel gratitude for their increasing success in making us see what we are enabling when we consume the products of this barbaric and sociopathic industry.

Correction: October 7, 2017
An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed authorship of the book “The Inner World of Farm Animals” to Jane Goodall. It was written by Amy Hatkoff. Goodall wrote the foreword to the book, from which her quote in this story was drawn.

Top photo: Two dying piglets were rescued by Direct Action Everywhere activists from cruel conditions — where they were left to suffer to death — at Smithfield-owned Circle Four Farm in Utah.

The post The FBI’s Hunt for Two Missing Piglets Reveals the Federal Cover-Up of Barbaric Factory Farms appeared first on The Intercept.