When Upton Sinclair serialized The Jungle during the early part of the last century, he “wrote the novel to portray the life of the immigrant in America, but readers were more concerned with the large portion pertaining to the corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early-20th century, and the book is now often interpreted and taught as only an exposure of the industry of meatpacking.” Modern anti-factory-farming activists, would-be inheritors of Sinclair’s mantle, have used our own century’s version of street-level communications technology — undercover videos — as their most potent weapon. According to the NYTimes, state legislators in debt to Big Agribusiness are trying to make this illegal:
Undercover videos showing grainy, sometimes shocking images of sick or injured livestock have become a favorite tool of animal rights organizations to expose what they consider illegal or inhumane treatment of animals.
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Made by animal rights advocates posing as farm workers, such videos have prompted meat recalls, slaughterhouse closings, criminal convictions of employees and apologies from corporate executives assuring that the offending images are an aberration.
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In Iowa, where agriculture is a dominant force both economically and politically, such undercover investigations could soon be illegal.
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A bill before the Iowa legislature would make it a crime to produce, distribute or possess photos and video taken without permission at an agricultural facility. It would also criminalize lying on an application to work at an agriculture facility “with an intent to commit an act not authorized by the owner.”
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Similar legislation is being considered in Florida and Minnesota, part of a broader effort by large agricultural companies to pre-emptively block the kind of investigations that have left their operations uncomfortably — and unpredictably — open to scrutiny…
Talk about gilding the budget-priced, salmonella-tainted egg. Don’t stop the criminal behavior, just make it illegal to demonstrate that such criminal behavior ever happened!
Read the whole article (not while you’re eating, though), because the details are appalling and damning. And, yes, it does give Mr. Sinclair his due.
dr. bloor
Gotta give the plutocrats credit. They certainly do learn from experience.
singfoom
Wow. Way to criminalize the discovery of corporate behavior that is criminal and bad for the public. Another example of how corporations/businesses are the true citizens of this country, while the rest of us proles just have to get by.
I love how the industry is more important than the health of normal human beings. I’d make an “All hail our new corporate overlords” joke, except they’re not new and it’s not a joke.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, you know, if you have uncorruptable inspectors wandering through the slaughterhouses, the truth of the operation will get out.
But, I forget, you don’t need regulations on these guys, the market will fix everything!
You’ll notice that what these activists are doing is actually providing the consumer with intelligence that the meat packers don’t want them to have, in order to restrict the participation of the consumer in the market, and give the meat packer an advantage that can be translated into profit.
Libertarian shitheads really do have serious blinders about information imbalances as things go into the market for disposition, which is why beating libertarians senseless with big sticks isn’t necessary. They’re already senseless.
Barry
Meanwhile O’Keefe walks the streets a free man.
LGRooney
All you need to do is get some known media figure to fall afoul of the law, if it does become law, and turn it into a 1st-Amendment case. Even the current court wouldn’t allow it to stand under those circumstances.
Xecky Gilchrist
Just like how Rumsfeld’s response to the Abu Ghraib pictures was to ban cameras. It’s the first step in this kind of fight to expose the truth.
Meanwhile, consider going vegetarian or at least dealing only with meat suppliers you know you can trust.
joe from Lowell
OT: That $38 billion in cuts the President agreed to? The “largest year-to-year cuts in history?”
The CBO ran the numbers. Turns out they’re actually only $350 million in cuts, and John Boehner is in trouble with his party for agreeing to it.
I guess we now know why his statement announcing the deal was so terse. He got meep-meeped on this deal. So did a lot of people.
wonkie
I hate Republicans.
Cris (without an H)
It’s fair to bring him up, because let’s get this clear: I firmly believe James O’Keefe has the right to pull the stunts he pulls. It is not the act of making undercover video itself that O’Keefe’s opponents are taking issue with; it is the fact that he later selectively edits them to make them say something completely opposite of what actually happened. (And the fact that Breitbart gives his lies a platform, and the fact that the media swallows the lies without examining them.)
Kane
Take a look at this video shot undercover at a Butterball slaughterhouse by investigators from PETA. Butterball employees laughed while they kicked, punched, stomped, and even sexually assaulted turkeys.
http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/turkeys.aspx
If the turkeys were dogs or cats, these people could be arrested. But the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act specifically excludes turkey and chickens and other birds from protection.
BR
This is why Food Inc. needs to be seen by more Americans:
http://documentarystorm.com/indie-films/food-inc-the-truth-about-our-food/
The Ancient Randonneur (formerly known as The Grand Panjandrum)
If they are willing to go after Oprah just imagine what they have in store for a bunch of tofu eating DFH’s.
joeyess
What’s next? Will they make it illegal to even accuse big Agra?
beergoggles
Cops have been trying to make it illegal to film their abuse of power so I’m not surprised anybody else of means is doing the same. Yet another milestone down the path to corporatism.
Paul in KY
The funny thing about ‘The Jungle’ is that Mr. Sinclair never set out to do an expose on unhealthy food packing processes. He was using that industry to illustrate the terrible plight of the working man & the pressing need for labor reform.
His vivid descriptions though grossed out everybody & led to many laws governing the processing of foodstuffs.
Mnemosyne
Given that the Supreme Court just decided that selling “squash” videos of animals being killed is protected under the First Amendment with the rationale that it was to protect the First Amendment rights of animal activists who do this exact kind of action, I think this law will get slapped down in the very first court it’s brought to.
tkogrumpy
In addition to whatever else I had to do to make a living, I have been a subsistence farmer most of my adult life. All I have to say on this subject is, never,ever, consider price when you are buying food. It’s always bad for your families health.
jinxtigr
When I read about farm subsidies being cut, the very first thing I thought about was, ‘does that mean Monsanto subsidies being cut? If so, hallelujah’.
You can’t assume words like ‘farm subsidies’ mean anything like ‘family farmers’, because there’s virtually none left, on the whole. Our food supply chain is tantamount to treason and terrorism. It’s pretty wildly unacceptable.
Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I for one think it’s disgusting to make videos secretly and then blindside the good, upstanding companies by letting them out. It’s only a few bad apples molesting the turkeys, not the invisible hand.
We just have to trust the free market to keep everything aboveboard. It always works. If some big ag company sells tainted food that kills people, they’ll be held accountable and go out of business. Unless they hide the evidence and nobody finds out about it. But then it’s just the fault of the stupid people who buy and eat the food, since a libertarian outlook would have led them to let the invisible hand guide their hands to untainted meat at the store. You can’t blame business for trying to make a profit, after all. Stupid soc¡alists.
RalfW
So grainy videos of cows in pens are to be illegal, but tilted, under-napkin videos of NPR executives are to be broadcast, without inquiry as to their accuracy, on all major media.
Go it. All makes sense now. One for all and all for the oligarchy. Thanx.
tkogrumpy
@BR: Watched it again just last night.
The Other Chuck
I am now left to assume by default that any meat not specifically certified otherwise by a reputable authority (not the USDA) is from diseased animals. Cynical as it seems, I think this assumption of guilt would be a healthy position for anyone to take.
Ruckus
What doesn’t kill you makes you
strongersickershano
They will not let anyone into a HFCS factory either.
TOC: no. When you know the local rancher and can see the health of the herd for yourself, the meat is much much better than any ‘approved’ meat. I only eat grass fed beef from my local rancher. It is so flavorful, so packed full of good fats and so clean I could make beef jerky out of it if I wanted to.
Stop eating ALL CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) meat for a month. You will be surprised at how much healthier you feel without those added antibiotics, steroids/hormones. It makes a huge difference. And you do not have to worry about MRSA. With grass fed beef the chances of bacteria contamination are nil.
It is the feeding of corn that makes beef toxic to people and will eventually kill the cow too if they didnt slaughter them before they become toxic from feeding on corn. They could stop this bacterial contamination of meat by switching the cows back to grass for a month before slaughter.
john patrick
Over here where I live in Taiwan (and even more so in Korea) the safety of American meat is a big issue. Thing is, if you take transparency out of the processing of meat, people outside the U.S. circle jerk are not going to buy it, and exports are not insignificant to the industry. Taiwan talk show hosts can’t be dragged to court for slandering the American burger.