Factory farms fancy secrecy

[Guest guest]

The Jungle Redux

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Factory farms fancy secrecy

Agribiz giants try slicing away at public's right-to-know

 

 

In a news cycle dominated by the permanent " war on

terrorism " and the

crisis in the Middle East, this story is an exception. It

comes to

you from the Midwest -- Illinois to be exact. It's a story

about

factory farms and how corporate interests are getting more

and more

concerned that you may find out how they go about their

business.

If corporate lobbyists continue to have their way with the

Illinois

state legislature, it may become as difficult to find out

the skinny

on factory farming as it has been to ferret out the truth of

the

Jenin refugee camp invasion or discover how many innocent

civilians

have been killed by the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan. The

public's

right to know is under attack both at home and abroad.

 

Factory farming is a business that often leaves a major mess

in its

wake. If you are an activist concerned with these issues,

you can try

lobbying for stricter regulations to protect the " farmed "

animals and

the environment from contamination. However, owners of these

operations do not want the outside world to find out what's

going on.

A few weeks back, the Illinois House took one step toward

that goal,

by passing House Bill 5793. By a 118-0 vote, legislators

passed a

bill making it illegal to photograph or videotape the

animals on

factory farms without the consent of their owner.

 

Although the Chicago Tribune reports that the bill is

" temporarily

stalled " in the state Senate, where it failed to make it out

of

committee in time for consideration this spring, Don Rolla

is still

concerned. " The bad news, " said Rolla, the executive

director of

Illinois Humane PAC, " is that the idea seems likely to come

back

either tacked onto other legislation in coming weeks or on

its own

next fall. "

 

House Bill 5793 " makes it a crime to be on a farm (or other

'animal

facility') and photograph or videotape pigs or any other

animals

without the consent of the owner if one's intent is to

'damage the

enterprise,' " reports the Tribune. The term " animal

facilities " is

defined as anywhere an animal is " kept, housed, handled,

exhibited,

bred, raised, or offered for sale or purchase. " The Peoria

Journal

Star claims that " the bill would prohibit state inspectors

from

taking pictures to document their investigations of these

farms. "

 

The Journal Star reports that " The stated need for the law,

according

to a legislative analysis, is to protect the food supply

from

terrorists.. The more plausible reason is that opponents of

factory

farms have been fond of using pictures of pigs raised body

to body,

or lagoons filled with sewage, to bolster their case. "

 

The Journal Star: " Beyond that, the law will discourage

whistleblowers who may be employed on a livestock farm, or

otherwise

there legally, from photographing abuses. Such pictures have

been

used before to go after violators. Opponents say people

likely will

be deterred from filming farms from the public right-of-way,

for fear

that a broad reading could subject them to criminal

penalties. "

 

Industry intimidation

 

Over the past several years, animal rights and family farm

activists

have documented how animals are being treated on factory

farms via

photos and videotape. This does not please the pork

industry, which

has used " unusual tactics to intimidate its critics, " writes

Christopher D. Cook in the September 1999 issue of The

Progressive

magazine.

 

In North Carolina according to Cook, Steve Wing, an

epidemiologist at

the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, headed a study

that

found " daily whiffs of hog factory waste appear to cause

sinus

problems, excessive coughing, headaches, nausea, and

diarrhea. " North

Carolina's booming $1.8 billion pork industry began

" pressuring Wing

and his assistant Susanne Wolf to identify the community --

and, by

association, the people -- that participated in the

research. " The

North Carolina Pork Council hired the Hunton & Williams law

firm " to

secure the researchers records-including documents that

could be used

to identify study participants who were guaranteed

confidentiality. "

 

" If you want to document waste spillage, animal abuse or

inhumane

conditions on a farm, there's no better way to do it than

with

photographs, " Diane Hatz, until recently head of the

factory-farm

project for the New York-based Global Resource Action Center

for the

Environment (GRACE), told the Chicago Tribune. " By trying to

take

away visuals, this legislation is trying to take away a

large portion

of our ammunition. "

 

Don Rolla: " As part of Humane PAC's efforts to pass

legislation to

bring an end to the millions of animals suffering in factory

farms, I

have gathered a number of shocking videos and photos that

were taken

in undercover efforts. The conditions and the cruelty they

show are

horrible, and the images in these photos and videos are

important for

us to have available to show the public. Such videos and

photos are

the only way to document what we all know takes place on a

daily

basis! This would impede undercover investigations of

inhumane

conditions. "

 

A Missouri bill -- HB 1794 - Animal Research and Production

Facilities -- has similar intentions and is currently under

consideration in the state legislature. The bill " prohibits

any

person from photographing, videotaping, or otherwise

obtaining images

from within an animal facility without the written consent

of the

facility. A person violating this provision of the bill is

guilty of

a class D felony. "

 

On the face of it, the Illinois bill introduced in February

by state

Rep. Mary K. O'Brien (D-Coal City) " seems only to remind

everyone

that laws proscribing burglary, trespassing, sabotage and so

on apply

also to farms, " reports the Tribune. " I have no problem with

that, "

said Karen Hudson, a grain farmer in Peoria County who is

heading up

GRACE's anti-factory-farm project in Illinois. " I'm not a

radical

type who believes in vandalism. "

 

However, Hudson worries about the small print -- that has

likely gone

unnoticed by Illinois House members. She claims that " the

1,100-word

bill is a Trojan Horse because of a 16-word clause making

unauthorized farm photography punishable by up to 6 months

in jail. "

That reference, she says, " appears on page 3 in Section 10,

Subsection C, paragraph 4 -- an aside buried so deep into

the tedious

legalese that it's a good bet most lawmakers didn't even see

it. "

 

Kevin Semlow, a lobbyist for the Illinois Farm Bureau, which

supports

the bill, told the Chicago Tribune that the legislation aims

to

prevent economic espionage. " A lot of these facilities do

high-tech

biological research, " Semlow said " We've had problems with

people

making videos of copyrighted technologies, such as the way

feed

systems work for livestock. "

 

What's really going on in Illinois and Missouri is an

attempt by the

agribusiness giants running America's factory farms to pull

the

blinds and prevent the dirty truths about their operations

from

getting to consumers. Most Americans are dead set against

cruelty to

animals on factory farms and the concomitant devastation of

the

environment, even if it were to save them a few cents at the

market.

 

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemId=13266

 

" The party descended to the next floor, where the various

waste

materials were treated. Here came the entrails, to be

scraped and

washed clean for sausage casings; men and women worked here

in the

midst of a sickening stench, which caused the visitors to

hasten by,

gasping. To another room came all the scraps to be " tanked, "

which

meant boiling and pumping off the grease to make soap and

lard; below

they took out the refuse, and this, too, was a region in

which the

visitors did not linger. In still other places men were

engaged in

cutting up the carcasses that had been through the chilling

rooms.

First there were the " splitters, " the most expert workmen in

the

plant, who earned as high as fifty cents an hour, and did

not a thing

all day except chop hogs down the middle. Then there were

" cleaver

men, " great giants with muscles of iron; each had two men to

attend

him - to slide the half carcass in front of him on the

table, and

hold it while he chopped it, and then turn each piece so

that he

might chop it once more. His cleaver had a blade about two

feet long,

and he never made but one cut; he made it so neatly, too,

that his

implement did not smite through and dull itself - there was

just

enough force for a perfect cut, and no more. So through

various

yawning holes there slipped to the floor below - to one room

hams, to

another forequarters, to another sides of pork. One might go

down to

this floor and see the pickling rooms, where the hams were

put into

vats, and the great smoke rooms, with their airtight iron

doors. In

other rooms they prepared salt pork - there were whole

cellars full

of it, built up in great towers to the ceiling. In yet other

rooms

they were putting up meats in boxes and barrels, and

wrapping hams

and bacon in oiled paper, sealing and labeling and sewing

them. From

the doors of these rooms went men with loaded trucks, to the

platform

where freight cars were waiting to be filled; and one went

out there

and realized with a start that he had come at last to the

ground

floor of this enormous building. "

 

" The Jungle " by Upton Sinclair

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Sinclair/TheJungle/03.html

--- End forwarded message ---

 

 

 

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