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Utah's "Ag-Gag" Law Overturned

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday July 09 2017, @09:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the resume-filming dept.

takyon writes:

A federal judge has ruled that Utah's ban on secretly filming farm and slaughterhouse operations is unconstitutional:

[U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby] rejected the state's defense of the law, saying Utah had failed to show the ban was intended to ensure the safety of animals and farm workers from disease or injury.

In his ruling, Shelby noted that one of the bill's sponsors in the state legislature, Rep. John Mathis, said the ban was a response to "a trend nationally of some propaganda groups ... with a stated objective of undoing animal agriculture in the United States." The judge noted that another sponsor, Sen. David Hinkins said it targeted "vegetarian people that [are] trying to kill the animal industry."

Ag-gag is a term used to describe a class of anti-whistleblower laws that apply within the agriculture industry.

Previously: Dairy Lobbyist Crafted Idaho's "Ag-Gag" Legislation
Federal Judge Strikes Down Idaho's "Ag-Gag" Law

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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday July 09 2017, @11:07PM

    by Arik (4543) on Sunday July 09 2017, @11:07PM (#536963) Journal
    Not everyone involved is, certainly, but there's clearly a core of 'animal rights' people that clearly think eating beef is basically in the same category as eating human flesh. Some of them, I fear I'm not joking, express a clear preference for the death of humans over any other animal.

    Anyway, that aside, I'm afraid I mostly agree with you here. Laws against whistleblowers are a dangerous idea - even if we know there are fake whistleblowers working a degenerate agenda, let's leave that burden of proof in there about actually having evidence they did something wrong. The alternative is a cure worse than the disease.

    BTW, I grew up on a small farm and I'd just as soon have my eggs farmed. Admittedly I am mildly averse to all things chicken in general - not my favorite food. But they're midget tyrannosaurs with brains the size of my thumbnail and I'm not shedding any crocodile tears for their supposedly poor living conditions. If you're going to raise them at all you might as well do massive, automated farming of them so far as I'm concerned, with as few humans as possible exposed to the pests. When they are 'free range' they mostly follow each other around in a circle clucking and eating each others feces. I suspect they're the inspiration for all the 'human centipede' horror stories. There's no way commercial automation could mess them up any worse.
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