The Law That Makes It Illegal to Report on Animal Cruelty

[n2doc]

What makes Idaho's agricultural industry deserve special protection from journalists and activists?
ANDREW COHEN

A complaint filed Monday in federal court in Idaho challenging the state's new "ag-gag" law is one of the most compelling I have read in a long time. As much a history lesson and muckraking manifesto as a series of factual allegations, the document asserts that Idaho's nascent effort to chill public oversight of its agricultural industry is both unconstitutional and unwise. Even if the plaintiffs lose, and I don't think they will, this initial pleading nobly advances their cause.

Idaho Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter signed the measure into law just three weeks ago. The statute creates the crime of "interference with agricultural production" by punishing anyone who makes an unauthorized "audio or video recordings" of what transpires inside food processing facilities in Idaho with up to one year in prison. It is designed, as its lengthy legislative record suggests, to help Big Ag prevent the public dissemination of images of animal abuse or unsafe conditions.

Images like those posted in April 2011 as part of an award-winning investigation into the state's dairy industry by the Boise Weekly. Or the video of farm workers in Idaho kicking and stomping on cows that the Boise Weekly posted in October 2012. It was this investigative work that caused one concerned lawmaker to lament recently not the cruelty, or unclean food, but the injustice of these farm operators being "tried and convicted in the press or on YouTube."

Yet these grim images, say the plaintiffs, are a vital part of "the public debate about animal welfare, food safety, environmental, and labor issues that arise on public and private lands." Indeed, the complaint alleges, the success of past undercover investigations—leading to food safety recalls, plant closures, and criminal convictions—are the very reason why Idaho's powerful farming lobby went to its legislature seeking this protection.

more

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-law-that-makes-it-illegal-to-report-on-animal-cruelty/284485/

[Nye Bevan]

1. Is this a law against "reporting" or a law against secret surveillance? (nt)

[magical thyme]

2. it's against videotaping

but not against still photography. It's to protect the ag industry from youtube dissemination of cruel and inhumane treatment of animals and from unhealthy, unclean conditions.