Workshop: Ag-Gag Arguments

• Should Activists Be Targeted with Ag-Gag Laws?
  • A Brief Video Debate over the Ethical Treatment of Animals turns to a Debate over the Ethical Treatment of Farmers and the Ethical Treatment of Activists.
    • Farmers say: Activists bolster their false claims of animal cruelty inside animal farms with doctored and manipulated footage.
    • Farmers say: Activists’ real agenda is to close all animal farms and force vegetarianism on the country.
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: Undercover footage has led to criminal charges against meat producers and food safety recalls.
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: We’re not green kooks. The Teamsters, the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union and other legitimate organizations have joined us in opposition to Ag-Gag laws. .
    • Farmers say: Releasing footage of presumably cruel treatment to the media instead of giving farms a chance to take corrective action demonstrates that activists want to harm farms more than help animals.
    • Farmers say: Waiting “even a minute” to gather a body of evidence of abuse instead of “turning it over” immediately proves activists don’t sincerely seek change; they seek to harm the farms.
    • Farmers say: Compiling months’ worth of tapes into provocative gross-out videos to release under a DONATE NOW button proves the disingenuousness of the activists’ motivation.
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: What we gather is evidence of criminal behavior.
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: Sadly, much of the abuse in meat-raising farms is institutionalized abuse against animals NOT PROTECTED by a single federal law.
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: The government doesn’t protect animals, and farms are understandably secretive about their operations, so undercover video is the only chance Americans have to see how their food is produced.
    • Farmers say: The last thing farmers need is to be policed by activists whose goal is to enforce a Vegan World.
    • Farmers say: We police ourselves. Workers are required to report abuse to the managers. Quality assurance officers, or some sort of managers, review footage from cameras in the processing plants.
    • Farmers say: 98% of US farms and ranches are “family-owned.”
    • Farmers say: It’s not in the best interest of farms to have allegations of abuse made against them.
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: Ten billion birds are slaughtered for food every year on farms that in many cases have 100,000,000 birds on one farm. The entire enterprise is massively industrialized, unsupervised, unrestrained by government regulation an oversight.
    • Moderator says: McDonalds restaurant chain fired Fargo Farms after allegations of cruelty to chickens brought to light by undercover video. [shows video]. How will Ag-Gag laws stifle this activity?
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: There is no other way to document and expose cruelty on farms that don’t invite scrutiny. The same day farm workers pled guilty to criminal animal abuse, the State legislature criminalized the kind of reporting that led to those convictions.
    • Moderator says: Why shouldn’t investigators who film abuse be required to turn that evidence over within 24 hours?
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: Evidence of a single case of abuse doesn’t provide evidence of a PATTERN OF ABUSE. Prosecutors will ignore single violations. But they have to address systemic abuse if it is documented.
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: Low-level employees cannot be expected to risk losing their jobs by reporting abuse.
    • Farmers say: The activists are shirking their real responsibility by running to the media to “expose” the employees engaging in “standard industry practices.” They just want to raise money by releasing shocking video images.
    • Farmers say: Nobody has a right to videotape on private property without permission. Farmers need protection against clandestine investigations.
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: If I were abusing animals in my home for their entire lives, I wouldn’t want anybody videotaping and documenting that behavior either.
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: Corporate farmers write the Ag-Gag laws and have muscled legislatures to criminalize any news gathering organization that documents their hidden behaviors.
    • Animal Rights Advocates say: Farms are closed to reporters. Employees are sworn to secrecy. Government doesn’t oversee the operations. And when farms hold conferences about denying access to oversight, they ban credentialed reporters from covering those events.

Extra Credit Task: Review and Annotate one of the Sources Below

• You may select any of the 9 sources below.
• Publish your work in the Ag-Gag Sources category,
• and your Username category, of course.
• Title your work Ag-Gag—Username.
• Use whatever format seems best for your Notes.

1. Law Declares Reporting Abuse to be Terrorism
2. Laws Turn Activists into Terrorists
3. Gross-Out Videos as an Activist Technique
4. Raising Animals for Food
5. Taping Cruelty is now the Crime
6. Open the Slaughterhouses
7. Warning, Graphic: The Meat Video (What Cody Saw)
8. Foie Gras Is Not Unethical
9. Two Videos on Gavage: Force-Feeding Geese
   and Cormorant Swallowing Whole Fish
10. Gagged by Big Ag

If the topic intrigues you, here’s another link I found during class:
How Big Agriculture Completely Controls 96% of Chicken Production

YouTube “Gotcha” video exposes chicken production practices.