Written by Paul DailI wanted to like the Utah agricultural interference law, also known as an “ag-gag” law.
I’m a red-blooded American. I eat meat and dairy, wear leather, and have even joked that cows probably aren’t going to do much else for society, like run for president.
With the recent news that Iron County prosecutors were dropping charges against animal rights activists found taking pictures at Circle Four Farms, I wanted to believe that HB 187, which restricts a person from intentionally recording “an image of, or sound from, the agricultural operation” without the consent of the owner, must have some good reasoning behind it besides protecting inhumane or cruel animal practices.
I grew up around agriculture. Before my father retired, he was the Chair of the Agriculture and Nutrition Science Department at Southern Utah University. As long as I can remember, I’ve always been around a farm. When it came to the Utah ag-gag law, I thought that certainly it was meant to somehow protect those hardworking men and women who already struggle enough just to eke out a living in this country. As my father is fond of saying, “If you’re going to criticize agriculture, don’t do it with your mouth full.”
In addition, Utah’s ag-gag law was patterned after the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, a model law drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council in 2002. And terrorists are bad, right? Especially domestic terrorists.
So I researched. Because I wanted to like the Utah ag-gag law.
And I researched some more.
But the more I looked into this law and the supposed reasoning behind it given by the original sponsor of the legislation, the more I realized that it didn’t matter how much lipstick you put on this pig; it was still a pig. And much as I like me some bacon, maybe this particular pig wasn’t any good for eatin’.
HB 187 was sponsored by Utah Rep. John G. Mathis (R-Vernal) in 2012. According to an article in Deseret News, Mathis claimed he wanted to put an end to “animal-rights terrorists” who were out to destroy the agricultural industry. At a Utah House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee hearing in February of 2012, he said that animal protection groups were using these investigations as propaganda to promote their own organizations.
Seems reasonable enough, right? Then questions started coming up. At the committee hearing, Rep. Craig Frank questioned the need for such legislation when trespassing is already against the law.
Criminal trespass is the charge, by the way, that the four members of Farm Animals Rights Movement (FARM) found on Circle Four Farms property will still face, even though their attorney claims they were on a public roadway. According to Utah Code 76-6-206, criminal trespass is a class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
And when it comes to laws and our rights, what about that pesky First Amendment to the United States Constitution? You know, the one protecting freedom of speech and freedom of press. Opponents to the ag-gag laws currently on the books in six states say that this freedom has been crucial in bringing about reform in the past.
The book “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair has been brought up as an example of a journalist shining a light on unsanitary practices. Even though Sinclair said he was more interested in appealing to the American public’s heart regarding life as an immigrant at the time, the book’s focus on the conditions of the meat packing industry in the early-20th century led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
Were Sinclair alive and living in Utah today, he would have been prohibited from such investigations, and if you’ve read “The Jungle,” you know what kind of food we’d be putting on our table for our family… and you’d probably choose not to. Besides journalists and activists, the Utah ag-gag law, also known as an “anti-whistleblower” law, would also prevent an employee who witnessed questionable behavior at an agricultural operation from documenting it.
Then there was the article at RepublicReport.org that identified two of the other individuals who testified at the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee hearing regarding the proposed ag-gag legislation as Mike Kohler of the Utah Dairy Producers and Sterling Brown of the Utah Farm Bureau.
Following the money, both of these organizations contributed $1,000 to the AGPAC political action committee, the fifth largest donor of Mathis’ 2008 campaign and twelfth largest donor to his 2010 campaign (information available through Disclosures.Utah.gov and The National Institute on Money in State Politics).
But perhaps the biggest kick in the pants would be Mathis’ comments in the Deseret News piece where he claims that farmers know better than animal activists what their animals need to be healthy and happy. Again, having grown up around farms, I won’t disagree, but there’s a pretty big difference between the American ideal of farming and cramming a bunch of chickens into a cage just to save space and produce as many eggs as possible.
As another “by the way,” the movement to improve conditions in egg farms is actually an area that Mathis specifically criticized, even though suggested improvements were the result of cooperation between two former adversaries, the president of the United Egg Producers and the president of the Humane Society of the United States.
So why does Utah still have an ag-gag law on the books? The answer is that it may not be for much longer.
In July of 2013, two national nonprofit organizations, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, filed a lawsuit against the State of Utah challenging the ag-gag law for its constitutionality, specifically violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendment. Even though attorneys for the state argued that the case should be thrown out, according to an article from the Salt Lake Tribune in August of 2014, U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby refused to do so.
However, Shelby still has said that at this point, the plaintiffs have failed to show how the statute has resulted in past injury or will cause future injury, but the case will still have its proverbial day in court.
I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that infringing on the First Amendment injures us all, especially when it comes to having information about the food we choose to put in our bodies.
I’m not going to stop eating meat any time soon, and I understand that we live in a country that operates under a “cheap food” policy, the concept that to feed this many people, sometimes you have to do things that might be considered unsavory (pun intended). However, I believe it is my right to decide whether I believe an animal is being treated inhumanely and if I’m going to still pay for that product after I have decided.
To make that decision, I need the information journalists and investigators provide, information that doesn’t necessarily come in a tidy package wrapped in an “owner approved tour.” Ag-gag laws take that right away from me and the rest of the American public.
Paul D. Dail received his BFA in English with a Creative Writing emphasis from the University of Montana, Missoula. In addition to freelance journalism and web content creation, he also enjoys writing creative nonfiction and fiction (with a penchant for the darker side of the page). His collection of flash fiction, “Free Five,” has spent over a year and a half in the top 50 Kindle Horror Shorts Stories since its publication in 2012. Currently he lives on the outskirts of Kanarraville, surrounded by sagebrush and pinyon junipers with his wife and two children.
