Multiple state legislatures are proposing and enacting bills that would ban animal rights activists from videotaping animal cruelty in industrial farms. Various lobbyist groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation, which lobby for the protection of farming corporations, support this legislation. They find protecting these corporations against activists necessary because their video evidence has supplied crucial evidence in legal cases against offending companies, costing them clients, money and reputation.
Activists have gone undercover and have videotaped acts such as burning horses with acid, beating pigs, stabbing cows with pitchforks and cutting off the beaks of chickens. They have offered these videos as evidence in cases against offending corporations. Lobby groups and state legislatures have designated these activists as enemies and have even supported registering them as terrorists under the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act.
These lobbyist groups claim that the activists will videotape farming practices that, though seemingly barbaric to the untrained viewer, are actually legal and approved farming practices. They contend that the activists wrongfully damage these companies’ reputations by portraying their humane farming practices as animal cruelty.
I do not see how this argument is logical. Any person who views any of these videos will see farmers stabbing cows with pitchforks and viciously punching them, kicking them and beating them with metal bars, using strung-up turkeys as punching bags, and tossing piglets across rooms and beating them against the floor until they die. You will also witness these people sadistically bragging about their actions afterward. These acts of cruelty cannot possibly be necessary or legal for the cultivation of meat for sale. The companies that allow these acts to occur on their farms should face serious punishment, and the activists devoted to exposing them should be encouraged, not designated as terrorists.
Anyone who takes a look at these videos — after cringing in absolute horror — will discover that there is no possible way these companies are victims of libel. Though these animals are bred and treated for slaughter to support our food industry, they are legally supposed to be treated as humanely as possible. Because, clearly, kicking cows and gaining a sadistic thrill from the action is neither humane nor necessary to prepare the cow for slaughter, these companies are guilty of illegal animal cruelty. Therefore, the lobbyists and state legislatures that have favored enacting laws to ban the videotaping of these crimes — videotaping that has been successful in prosecuting offending companies — are clearly only trying to preserve the reputations of their deep-pocketed, corporate supporters.
After witnessing some of these videos, I believe state legislatures should actually start doing their job by upholding our society’s laws against animal cruelty. They should protect the animals — the victims — instead of the wealthy, guilty corporations for a change.
A version of this article appeared in the Apr. 16 print edition. Audrey Wright is a contributing columnist. Email her at [email protected].
