ag-gag

Iowa’s ag-gag law failed to pass before summer recess last week: a good thing.

When a journalist can’t see how the food we eat is produced, you don’t need ag-gag laws.

North Carolina's so-called ag-gag law is in the legal crosshairs.

The next day, McCrory vetoed a variation on an "ag-gag" bill.

Members of the group will dress in black and wear blindfolds and gags to illustrate what they call an ag-gag bill.

This type of bill, sometimes characterized as "anti-whistleblower" or "ag-gag" legislation, sparked heated public discourse.

Florida, Minnesota, and New York also introduced — but didn't pass — similar "ag-gag" bills this year.

Fifty-nine groups, including a wide variety of welfare, civil liberties, environmental, food safety and First Amendment organizations have publicly stated opposition to ag-gag laws.

Supporters of ag-gag laws have argued that they serve to protect the agriculture industry from the negative repercussions of exposés by whistleblowers.

Ag-gag laws emerged in the early 1990s in response to threats posed by underground activists with the Animal Liberation Front movement.

The idea is to circumvent ag-gag prohibitions by keeping the drones on public property, but equipping them with cameras sensitive enough to monitor activities on the farms.

The legislation is very similar to other "ag-gag" measures introduced this year in Iowa, Florida, and Minnesota, which have been widely criticized as unconstitutional and anti whistle-blowing.

"Ag-gag" laws have been heavily promoted by the conservative think tank the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

“Many of these so-called ag-gag bills require that any incidents of animal abuse be reported immediately,” said Sarah Hubbart, a spokeswoman for the Animal Agriculture Alliance.

She also scoffs at the concept of ALEC being pro-free speech, noting the organization's role in promoting "ag-gag" legislation that criminalizes those who record animal abuse on factory farms.

These so-called "ag-gag" bills have ignited a national debate about undercover videos and have raised concerns about free speech and journalists' and whistleblowers' ability to report on the farming industry.

Ag-gag laws have also drawn criticism on constitutional grounds by eminent legal scholars like Erwin Chemerinsky as a violation of the First Amendment for restricting unpopular forms of speech.

Despite the North Carolina bill's bland name, it contains the same language and provisions as many of the "ag-gag" bills listed below, including 1) photography bans, 2) job application/fraud, and 3) mandatory reporting within (in this case) 24 hours.

In February 2014, Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed Idaho's "ag-gag" bill, the "Agricultural Security Act", into law, which imposed fines and jail time on activists who secretly film abuse on Idaho's commercial farms.

In April 2013, the North Carolina state Senate introduced the "Commerce Protection Act" (SB648), which journalist Will Potter called "a good example of how corporations and industry groups are responding to the media backlash" against "ag-gag" bills.

Believing that farm animals should be treated humanely, Matalin teamed up with PETA to produce a video in 2013, encouraging Indiana lawmakers to vote against "ag-gag" bills that would ban unapproved videotaping on farms and businesses.

Various states, including Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, and Utah, have passed so-called "ag-gag" laws in order to prevent PETA and other groups from conducting undercover investigations of operations that use animals.

Many ag-gag bills are also similar to ALEC's model "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act", which would make it against the law to film, videotape, or take photographs on livestock farms in order to "defame the facility or its owner".

But PETA and a coalition of animal-welfare groups brought a lawsuit, "citing First Amendment protections for free speech," against Idaho that overturned the state's "ag-gag" law in August 2015, setting a precedent that may help overturn these laws in other states.

The proliferation of ag-gag laws have been criticized by various groups, arguing that the laws are intended primarily to censor animal rights abuses by the agriculture industry from the public, create a chilling effect in reporting these violations, and violate the right to freedom of speech.