This is almost unbelievable…
But not much is really unbelievable when Big Business controls the government…
And one thing politicians and corporate executives both fear is being exposed on the internet by regular people with cell phone cameras, etc…
Their best defense is to operate in secrecy. They’ll do anything they can to keep out of the limelight-except when the Corporate owned politicians are running their their talking points in front of patriotic backgrounds trying to get re-elected.
Reagan proved “image is everything” and they are still trying to get by with style- and media control- over substance and a free press.
The last thing they want is an empowered electorate or average people having the tools to blow their image….
In Florida, the Humane Society of the United States and other groups pushed for the adoption of the first statewide law in the country to restrict the extreme confinement of animals on factory farms. In 2002, voters there passed Amendment 10, to phase out the caging of breeding sows in gestation crates. In Iowa, HSUS and other animal welfare groups have conducted a series of undercover investigations (see the video) to expose cruelty in the nation’s biggest factory farming state.
Now, these two states have something else in common. They are trying to make it a crime to photograph or videotape farm animals. They don’t want to criminalize animal cruelty, but they do want to make criminals of people trying to document abuse and to put an end to the cruelty. Lawmakers have introduced bills in both states to establish criminal penalties for going undercover at agricultural facilities and simply taking pictures.
Mind you, if this legislation is enacted, it won’t just be a setback for animal welfare. Shabby, squalid, overcrowded conditions for animals on factory farms are also a food-safety threat for Americans, with millions of Americans sickened every year by contaminated food. It was, of course, an Iowa egg factory farm that was forced to recall half a billion eggs last year because of a Salmonella outbreak, creating one of the biggest food product recalls in American history.
With a potentially dramatic pare-back of funding for federal inspections of animal-agriculture operations looming, at production and slaughter facilities, these new proposed policies to bar the exposure of unhealthy and unsafe practices could not come at a more inopportune time. The industry has long argued for self-regulation, and with government inspection programs stretched so thin, they now want no meddling animal advocacy groups looking either.
via Big Ag Wants To Make It a Crime to Expose Animal Abuse at Factory Farms | | AlterNet.
Lost in the 21st Century 