The pros and cons of ag-gags

In 2008, a relatively anonymous Californian meatpacker shot to notoriety by issuing the biggest recall of meat in the history of the US. Westland/Hallmark Meat Packing Company recalled 143 million pounds of beef. The order was retrospective for two years, meaning the majority of the offending beef had already been consumed. During that time, the beef had been served in school cafeterias around the country and sold to the general public.

The recall came after the Humane Society of the United States released video footage of the violations compiled by an undercover agent who had taken employment at the company’s site in Chino, California. The footage showed so-called ‘downer’ cows – animals that cannot walk – being forklifted to the slaughter. Downer cows are banned by the US Department of Agriculture for posing an increased risk of E. coli, salmonella and mad cow disease. Despite numerous inspections and audits of the facility by USDA sanitation agents, the shortcomings were not detected before the video was released.

In recent years, whistleblowers have denounced animal abuse and unsanitary farm conditions affecting a number of household name companies, including Tyson Foods, McDonald’s and Yum! (KFC’s suppliers). Ag-gags have been designed to halt the use of deceptive tactics by activists, who primarily target the beef and poultry businesses (worth $74bn and $45bn a year respectively). Monsanto, the world’s biggest agricultural biotechnology corporation, and other agricultural companies have backed the measures.

Risky business
Factory farms are a huge industry in the US; there are four factory-farmed chickens for each American and the number of dairy cows in factory farms doubled between 1997 and 2007 (to 4.9 million animals). Recently, there has been a renewed outcry against what are seen as inhumane farming conditions, and corporations have already started demanding better conditions from their pork suppliers. In February, McDonald’s declared it would no longer accept meat from farms that still used gestation pens – a practice deemed cruel by activist groups.

Media attention to animal welfare has significant, negative effects on US meat demand

Research by Kansas State University and Purdue University has concluded, “as a whole, media attention to animal welfare has significant, negative effects on US meat demand”. Emily Meredith, Communications Director for industry advocacy group Animal Agriculture Alliance maintains videos can be edited or manipulated to promote the agenda of activist groups, and do not reflect the industry as a whole.

“I am not going to deny that there are bad apples just like there are in every industry,” Meredith says. “But the majority of farm families do the right thing every day. These videos are a really unfair portrayal of the industry as a whole.”

But activist groups such as the Humane Society, an NGO that promotes vegetarianism, maintains the public has a right to know if abuses or violations are occurring in meat processing and packaging plants. There are lingering concerns over the condition animals are kept in, and standards of hygiene.

Time enough
Activist groups have maintained that the lack of policing by the USDA means infringements by farmers usually go undetected – as in the Hallmark case – putting animals and humans at risk. As well as the Californian cases, the Humane Society has also used undercover footage to secure convictions for cruelty against a number of Tyson Foods employees at a pig farm in Wyoming.

Each of the dozen or so states that have passed or are in the process of passing ag-gag bills has slightly different provisions for the legislation. Overall, however, the aim is not only to make it a crime to record undercover video at any livestock operations, but also to make it illegal for anyone to obtain a farm job ‘under false pretences’, meaning activists will no longer be able to go undercover into offending operations with the intention of whistleblowing without risking incurring a fine and a hefty jail sentence.

Some states have proposed a short statute of limitation for whistleblowers to report their findings to the authorities. In Nebraska, for instance, a recently proposed bill would require cruel treatment to be reported within 12 hours.“[Activists] are trying to promote this legislation as ‘gagging’ when in fact all the legislation mandates that you report the abuse, which really goes to the heart of the issue,” Meredith says. “If you really cared about animal welfare would you even wait a second to report animal abuse? In my mind, you wouldn’t be waiting at all.” But there is something to be said about how long it might take an undercover agent to gather information and establish patterns of abuse.

Making amendments
The proliferation of the bills has raised many questions about whether they might infringe on activists’ freedom of speech – a right enshrined in the American Constitution. Recently, in Florida, a similar ag-gag bill – which prohibited the taking of images at farms without the owners’ permission – was defeated on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment.

California has also recently abandoned a similar bill presented to the state legislature by the California Cattlemen’s Association. The bill would have given investigators and activists only 48 hours to turn in evidence of violations at agricultural facilities, as well as made it a crime to take images at farms and slaughterhouses. The Californian bill was unusual because it would have exempted farm employees from turning in footage of animal cruelty captured on CCTV.

While the slew of undercover reporting has had a negative impact on the image of the industry as a whole, the bills can act in the public’s detriment. It can be argued consumers are entitled to know the reality of the meat products they are eating – even if it might make for unsavoury viewing. There are also the potential benefits exposing violations can bring – they can result in successful prosecution of the offending parties and even the raising of general industry standards, irrespective of the politics of the investigators or activists.

Cody Carlson, a former investigator, says: “When I applied for a job in Iowa in 2009 and they asked me if I had any affiliations to animal protection groups, I would have had to say yes, I wouldn’t have gotten the job and I wouldn’t have been able to expose the conditions that raised questions about the egg industry there. It is exactly what these industries want – they want to shut down the conversation that’s going on about what is happening with the animals we raise for our food.”