What Is the Meat Industry Trying to Hide?
by PAUL SHAPIRO
April 2, 2015 4:00 AM
“Ag-gag” bills seek to criminalize whistleblowers who are exposing grotesque animal abuse.
In recent years, whistleblowing exposés have repeatedly documented inhumane treatment of animals and the food-safety problems inside the farms and slaughter plants that produce nearly all of our nation’s meat, eggs, and dairy products.
The Humane Society of the United States and other like-minded groups are conducting investigations that help shine a bright light on agribusiness practices such as confining animals in cages so tiny that for most of their lives they can’t even turn around. The results of these investigations speak for themselves. Such videos have led to meat recalls, slaughter-plant shutdowns, criminal convictions, congressional hearings, and new federal policies.
The meat industry’s response to these exposés should be a stepped-up effort to prevent these abuses. Sadly, the industry has instead tried to clamp down on the exposés themselves so that the American people will never find out about them. In dozens of states, agribusiness lobbyists have backed bills to criminalize not the abuses being documented but rather the documentation of the abuses. Nearly all of these “ag-gag” bills have been defeated in state legislatures, but that doesn’t seem to dampen the meat industry’s enthusiasm for them. So far this year, ag-gag attempts in Kentucky, Colorado, New Mexico, and Washington have been defeated; but lawmakers in Wisconsin and North Carolina are considering such legislation now.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416316/what-meat-industry-trying-hide-paul-shapiro
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