It seems these days that you can't go online or turn on the news without seeing another example of how the corporatization of agriculture has resulted in new lows of animal cruelty on a mass scale. Iowa has responded, not with animal rights reform or explanations that shed a different light on photos and film footage taken covertly by animal rights activists but rather with the so called "Ag-Gag law." This law criminalizes misrepresenting one's self in order to gain access to farms for the purposes of exposing their practices.
I grew up in farm country. Most farmers are honest, decent, hardworking folks who treat their animals with dignity and decency and do what they can to avoid imposing undue discomfort. These are not the people that animal rights activists are exposing and they are not, I repeat, NOT the people that this bill is protecting. The exposed practices of undue cruelty come from industrial scale farming and ranching practices that are reminiscent of the industrial age in America. The practices are shocking and cruel and would probably make most self-employed farmers and ranchers gag. This is Iowa protecting big business, not local farmers.
What's next? Creating walled-off ghettos behind which the unspeakable practices can continue to stock our supermarket shelves with unprecedented quantities of meat, eggs, and milk? In an age where "organic," "free range," and "cruelty free" have become indicators of quality (regardless of the fact that there is no standard required for those labels), this is an unwise move. This is the information age, Iowa! Even in Iowa, there are very few secrets in regard to real concrete practices - creative accounting and market speculation may yet flourish in this country, but the actual horrifying practices that are currently practiced and those that would no doubt develop without media scrutiny will get out. It's a corporate farm, Iowa, not a military base. Clean up or clean out.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/10/148363509/ag-gag-law-blows-animal-activists-cover
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