DawnWatch
April 2013
Critics call them 'Ag-Gag' bills.' He describes the work of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has created a bill called The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act. It prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to defame the facility or its owner. Oppel notes: Violators would be placed on a 'terrorist registry.'
It is on the cover of the Sunday, April 7, New York Times, titled,
"Videos Show Cruelty on Farm and Taping Becomes the Crime." And it is on the
web, titled similarly, as "Taping of Farm Cruelty Is Becoming the Crime."
With both the front page story and web article we see a photo of sows in
gestation crates, which most Dawnwatch subscribers know are individual cages
that do not provide enough room for a pig to turn around, or even
comfortably lie down; each intelligent animal spends much of her life
staring straight ahead or biting fruitlessly at the bars, going insane from
both mental and physical distress.
Reporter Richard A. Oppel Jr. opens the article by describing some effective
undercover animal cruelty investigations that have led to prosecutions of
the abusers. Then he writes:
"But a dozen or so state legislatures have had a different reaction: They
proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape
livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal
rights groups. They have also drafted measures to require such videos to be
given to the authorities almost immediately, which activists say would
thwart any meaningful undercover investigation of large factory farms.
"Critics call them 'Ag-Gag' bills."
He describes the work of the "American Legislative Exchange Council", which
has created a bill called "The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act." It
prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to "defame the
facility or its owner."
Oppel notes: "Violators would be placed on a 'terrorist registry.'"
The article points to first amendment issues inherent in the various ag-gal
bills, and the chilling effect we can expect from the threat of punishment
for whistle blowers.
Please check the article out, and share it
widely. Then why not send a letter to the editor? You can comment directly
on the ag-gag laws or use the article as a basis for whatever point you wish
to make about our treatment of other species or the need to move towards
plant-based diets.
The New York Times takes letters at [email protected]
I send thanks to Mark Langley for making sure that we saw the article.
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at DawnWatch. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts only if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include these parenthesized tag lines. Please go check out Karen Dawn's book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals," which when it was published in 2008 was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the "Best Books of The Year!")
Number of animals killed in the world by the fishing, meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.
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