Protect People who Protect Animals – Stop Ag-Gag

Wikimedia Commons

1. Please click HERE to sign petition for PA

2. Please click HERE to sign petition for TN

3. Please click HERE to stop ag-gag

1. Background | Source Causes

Billions of animals in factory farms are forced to live in cruel and inhumane conditions. From chickens who are squeezed into tiny cages to the inhumane slaughter of cows, the transport of horses across the borders to be slaughtered for human consumption, animals are treated cruelly and politicians (with their corporate supporters) are trying to keep this practice a secret.

Corporate backers of factory farms are trying to silence and criminalize brave individuals that expose the cruelties that animals face in farms across the US.  Not only does this go against our free speech but we as consumers and animal lovers have a right to know how these creatures are treated. We need to join together to stop these “Ag-Gag” bills. Please sign the petition today and forward it to friends.Below is an excerpt from the Pennsylvania House Bill 683.

This bill will allow factory farms to act in secrecy and criminalize those that try to stop them.

From Pennsylvania House Bill 683:

Offense defined – A person commits the offense of interfering with agricultural operations if the person:

1. Without consent from the owner of an agricultural operation or the owner’s agent:

• (i) records an image of, or sound from, the agricultural operation by leaving a recording device on the agricultural operation; or
• (ii) uploads, downloads, transfers or otherwise sends recorded images of, or sound from, the agricultural operations over the Internet in any medium.
• Also: (iii) while employed at, and while present on, the agricultural operation, records an image of, or sound from, the agricultural operation

2. Background | Source PETA

We urgently need your help to stop Tennessee Senate Bill (S.B.) 1248, which has passed through the legislature and is awaiting the signature of the governor, who has just 10 days to make a decision. If signed into law the bill could subject whistleblowers to criminal prosecution for their efforts to expose cruelty to animals on factory farms and in slaughterhouses. The bill would require those who document abuse to report it within 48 hours, stopping undercover investigators from documenting a pattern of routine cruelty that has helped authorities across the country enforce the law. It is a desperate attempt by agriculture industry giants to prevent consumers from learning the truth about the miserable lives and gruesome deaths of animals killed for food.

A 2007 PETA investigation at a Tyson chicken slaughterhouse in Tennessee that supplied KFC found that workers violently threw birds and yanked them out of shackles with such force that their legs were broken. Other past undercover investigations have resulted in criminal convictions after revealing systematic abuse, including footage collected at Aviagen Turkeys, Inc., in West Virginia that documented workers beating, stomping on, and maliciously killing birds. These abuses continued even after being brought to a supervisor’s and the management’s attention. Over the course of two months, the investigator collected meticulous evidence showing that these abuses were routine—and not just isolated incidents—helping officials obtain 23 indictments for cruelty to animals against three former employees, all of whom were convicted and one of whom was jailed.

S.B. 1248 is designed to shroud industries that exploit animals for profit in secrecy and to shield criminals from accountability under the law. Because of the help of compassionate citizens, similar bills have died in Florida, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Arkansas, Illinois, California, and New Mexico, and one was recently declared unconstitutional and gutted in Indiana.

Even if you don’t live in Tennessee, we still need your help. The meat from slaughtered animals crosses state lines, and the government needs to hear from consumers across the country who care about the way animals killed for food are treated. Please urge Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam to veto S.B. 1248 right away!

3. Background | Source ALDF

Animal abuse, food safety violations, and illegal working conditions are rampant on factory farms. In 2011, the corporate agriculture lobby attempted to pass ag gag laws which would have made it illegal to photograph or videotape at agricultural facilities, or to possess or distribute such evidence. In the 2011-2012 legislative session, 10 states introduced ag gag bills, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Utah. In 2013, Arkansas, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Wyoming introduced ag gag legislation, and many other state legislatures are poised to do the same. Ag gag bills are already on the books in Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Iowa, Utah, and Missouri.

The goal of ag gag laws is insidious: to silence whistleblowers and eliminate access to critical evidence of farmed animal and other abuses. What’s more, restrictions or prohibitions on these records would decrease the opportunities for food safety violations to be discovered, thereby increasing the risk that consumers could be exposed to and contract illnesses from the consumption of unsafe food products and produce from jurisdictions that pass ag gag legislation.

Factory farms, like other industries, are already fully protected from illegal activities that could detrimentally impact them by trespass, fraud, and other existing criminal and civil laws – despite corporate agriculture’s claims to the contrary. Ag gag bills were designed to place restraints on free speech by making it a crime to take photos or video on a factory farm without the written permission of the owner. Under the guise of property rights, ag gag bills are intended to prevent consumers from ever seeing the horrors of animal abuse, contaminated crops, illegal working conditions, and risky food safety practices—the sort that result in massive food safety recalls and all too frequently lead to outbreaks of food-borne illness—that are common practice behind factory farm gates.

ALDF and a broad range of stakeholders have raised concerns about the potentially devastating impacts of these and newer ag gag legislation efforts. Ag gag is a grave concern for everyone from journalists to whistleblowers to animals to mothers concerned about the safety of their children’s food.

you want to hide the truth,
in the name of the dollar.
we are the voices of animals
and we will stand up
and HOLLAR!

Karen Lyons Kalmenson