These are anti-whistleblower laws that blocks anyone from exposing factory farms that have animal cruelty, food-safety issues, poor working conditions, and more. This bans photos and videos from being recorded without permission and makes it a crime for an investigator or someone else to work at a factory farm with the intent to harm.
Many states currently have these laws. In Idaho, Utah, and Iowa, it is illegal to take video or audio of the farm, and one cannot trespass on the factory farm to unveil a crime or to investigate. In Missouri, one cannot keep a video or audio of the factory farm if they want to use it to incriminate the farm. One must turn in the video within 24 hours of taking the video. In South Carolina and New York, one cannot trespass on a factory farm with the intent to do harm or damage.
The Ag-Gag laws violates the will of the American people, and also contradicts American values. The government cannot restrict speech based on content. The purpose of these laws is to silence the speech of the opposition. This could lead to a greater restriction of speech due to what Benjamin Franklin called the slippery slope. If we let the government keep taking our rights, eventually they will begin taking more and more rights. We, as a people, should not let the government continue taking away our rights. The government should also not target classes of citizens as these laws certainly do. These laws target the citizens who spend their lives investigating animal cruelty. A few have already been charged.
These Ag-Gag laws should be stopped as soon as possible. Whistleblowers help find the animal cruelty and food-safety issues. For instance, at one farm, they had live chickens living with dead, rotting, chickens and were still selling the eggs even though they were contaminated. These laws only benefit corporations. That same farm did business with Walmart and Target before the investigation and after the discovery, these stores dropped the farm as an egg supplier.
