Exercise your Right to Know and Educate Others on the Realities of Factory Farms

Last month, we told you about the unfortunate return of so-called “ag gag” bills in several states; these are bills which aim to criminalize whistleblowing exposés of the cruel realities of factory farming. In other words, agribusiness interests are trying to shut down undercover investigations in an effort to prevent Americans from finding out what really goes on behind the closed doors of the meat, milk, and egg industries.

This state-level legislative effort against animal advocacy reared its ugly head last year, with New York, Iowa, Florida, and Minnesota introducing these bills. Since then, Indiana, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, and Utah have also introduced similar bills.

And Iowa has redoubled its efforts just in the last few weeks in a desperate attempt to hide the abusive, yet common agribusiness practices such as those just uncovered by a COK investigator who worked inside a pig breeding facility in Leland, Iowa.  If you live in Iowa, please take action now.

While we fight against these bills, it is important to remember what’s driving these draconian attempts to silence us: the truths that are uncovered by investigations.

Investigations offer the public a small window into the everyday cruelties and neglect forced upon billions of animals — abuses that are hidden behind closed and agribusiness interests want to keep it that way: hidden. As consumers however, we have a right to know where our food comes from. If anything, there’s a need for more transparency on factory farms, not less

Perhaps now more than ever, it’s imperative on us to empower ourselves and give a voice to the billions of farmed animals who suffer in silence as they are routinely treated as mere meat-, milk-, and egg-producing machines. Let’s exercise the right that we have to spread the painful truths about animal agribusiness: educate yourself, educate others, and share this undercover video and other images with as many people as possible. Use the power that investigations bring to create real change for these animals, especially while we still have that power.