Iowa Ag-Gag Update: Last Pending Bill is Dead

Iowa’s legislative session has just ended, and with it, the Iowa Ag Gag bill’s chances of passing this year. With the failure of this bill, on the heels of the failure of New York’s similar bill last Friday, every one of the four legislative attempts made to silence the documentation of the brutal realities of factory farms have failed this year.

Iowa’s HF-589/ SJ-1084, introduced by Rep. Annette Sweeny (District 44), would have criminalized the act of recording conditions for animal on agribusiness facilties without permission from the owner, clearly intending to shut down undercover investigations of factory farms exposing abuse.

These investigations are the public’s window into the unimaginable suffering that is business-as-usual behind the closed doors of the meat-, egg-, and dairy-industries. This is vital link to the otherwise secretive and deceptive world of factory farming. Just yesterday, in fact, an undercover investigation exposing the cruel realities of the pork industry on an Iowa factory farm (still image above) was released by Mercy For Animals.

While we celebrate this victory for the animals and thank everyone who worked diligently this year to fight against these unconstitutional bills, we remain aware of the very real possibility that these attempts will return next year. It’s important to continue to fight to protect our right to uncover and expose the truth about creul conditions forced upon the billions of animals who suffer needlessly for us to eat meat, milk and eggs.

In the meantime, the most important step each of us can take to protect animals is to simply leave them off our plates.