As you read this, one of the biggest threats to human health, animal welfare, and free speech is unfolding in Iowa.
The state with the weakest animal protection laws in the nation has just passed House File 589, a bill that would criminalize undercover investigations of any misconduct at factory farms including cruelty to animals, abuse of workers, or any crime that might have taken place inside the farm. This bill would effectively make illegal any exposure to what goes on behind the walls of these vast and secretive operations.
What is an industry so eager to carve itself an unprecedented unique shield in law trying to hide? Watch this:
Warning: This video contains graphic images.
Animal rights groups report that every single time cameras are taken clandestinely inside factory farms they document hideous abuse of animals. As Mercy For Animals reports:
Recent undercover investigations at Iowa's corporate-owned factory farms and hatcheries have revealed that animal abuse runs rampant. Hidden-camera video at Iowa factory farms has exposed animals crammed into filthy cages so small they cannot even turn around or walk, and workers mutilating animals without painkillers, throwing live animals in grinding machines, and mercilessly beating, kicking, and throwing animals. Not a single federal law protects farmed animals from abuse or neglect during their lives on factory farms and Iowa specifically excludes farmed animals from protection against even some of the worst forms of factory farm cruelty.
This outright hijacking citizens' rights by corporations in Iowa can not be allowed to stand. The implications of such laws are far too wide and way too dangerous. And not just for animals but also for human health.
With the dramatic rise of food-borne illness and zoonotic diseases what we need now is more transparency, not laws forbidding investigators from uncovering the truth.
Please call Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and strongly urge him to veto House File 589 at (515) 281-5211.