The more light that’s shed on the “Big Lick” faction of the Tennessee walking horse industry, the clearer it becomes that Congress must upgrade the original language in the Horse Protection Act to deter the criminal abuse that is inflicted on the horses involved, and to give the federal government the tools it needs to crack down on violators. Newly introduced legislation – the Prevent All Soring Tactics Act – will strengthen the HPA by ending industry self-regulation, fortifying penalties for violations of the law, and expanding its prohibitions to include a ban on mechanical soring tactics, such as the use of stacks and chains on horses’ feet. 

Chad Sisneros
The artificial, high-stepping gait called the "Big Lick."

Despite efforts by the Tennessee legislature to enact an ag-gag measure that would cover up abuses in the walking horse industry (that’s a story in itself), national scrutiny of the Big Lick fraternity continues to reveal widespread abuse. Last week, Tennessee and federal law enforcement officials raided a barn allegedly owned by Big Lick trainer Larry Wheelon. Reportedly, many of the 28 horses found there showed signs of having been treated with caustic substances on their legs and were in extreme pain.

Of course this would make Wheelon the second “superstar” of this industry to be exposed within the last year for cheating and for tormenting animals for a blue ribbon in the show ring. Wheelon has been cited at least 15 times for violations of the Horse Protection Act, but ironically he sits on the ethics committee for the Walking Horse Trainers’ Association, and is a AAA-rated horse show judge. It’s no wonder the horses victimized by soring are consistently rewarded as winners at Big Lick walking horse shows – with judges themselves apparently unwilling to follow the law, why would other trainers comply?

As if this weren’t proof enough that strict legislation is long overdue, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has just released the startling results of foreign substance testing it conducted at horse shows in 2012. The USDA tested show horses for evidence that their trainers or owners were putting illegal soring agents on their horses’ legs to make them step higher in the ring, or numbing or masking agents to hide signs of soring. Whichever illegal substance they use, the only purpose is to hurt a horse so badly that he compensates for the pain by walking with an unnaturally high gait. Of the 478 horses the USDA swabbed for illegal substances, 309 tested positive. That’s 65 percent of horses in random samplings at 2012 horse shows. At the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration, the “Grand Prix” for the Big Lick crowd, 76 percent of the horses randomly sampled tested positive for illegal substances. Imagine if three-quarters of the players in the World Series or the Super Bowl were found guilty of using illegal drugs. This is the corrupt, warped world of Big Lick horse competition – with many practitioners seemingly undeterred by high-profile prosecutions and widespread condemnation of their cruelty.

We’ve documented over and over the cruelty endured by Tennessee walking horses, and we’re continuing to see evidence that the Big Lick faction won’t reform on their own. Please join us in the fight to protect these horses, and open up the industry to those who wish to take part in humane and fairly-judged horse shows: call your representative in the U.S. Congress and urge him or her to cosponsor H.R. 1518. A Senate companion bill should be introduced soon.

For weeks, my colleagues and I have been sounding the alarm about a spreading threat to the animal protection movement nationwide and, more broadly, to transparency and free speech in our society – the introduction by state lawmakers of anti-whistleblower, or so-called ag-gag bills, in about a dozen states. I was in Nashville on Monday for a press conference at the Tennessee State Capitol urging Governor Bill Haslam to veto the Tennessee anti-whistleblower bill that would make it virtually impossible to conduct an undercover investigation at a factory farm or horse stable. And yesterday, I was in Los Angeles for a taping of America’s top daily talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which will broadcast today and include my interview with Ellen.

Watch Ellen today on your local affiliate, and go to Ellen’s Facebook page to share the interview with friends, family members, and others.

In the interview, I called on concerned citizens, especially Tennesseans, to contact Governor Haslam to veto this legislation. But I also asked everyone to get engaged in our fight to protect our rights and to understand what’s happening with the industrialization of animal agriculture.

The HSUS does so many things, including working very hard to reveal what’s really happening with animals in our society – even if the supply chains extend thousands of miles from us, and the use of animals is far removed from our daily experience.  We are so disassociated from what happens to animals in some sectors of the economy, and The HSUS is trying to close that gap and to call good people to conscience.  Even if abuse or exploitation happens in a far-off place, we are morally connected to it through the supply chains that sell and distribute food in restaurants, supermarkets, and other retail outlets.

At the end of the interview, Ellen surprised me by letting me know that if 25,000 people share the interview she conducted with me, then The HSUS will receive a $25,000 donation. I love the idea of more people seeing the interview and getting this additional support so we can redouble our efforts to expose cruelty and abuse, so I do hope you’ll spread the word.

Forty-three years ago to the day, U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day – a day to raise awareness about the environment in the U.S. – and it’s now celebrated internationally in nearly 200 countries. It was a grassroots insurgency, with events in communities throughout the nation producing, in a few short years, a raft of new policies to protect the environment, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.

Check out our new Meatless
Monday infographic.

Today, there remain an array of substantial threats to our environment. But one of the biggest threats that can no longer be sidestepped is industrialized agriculture. Its ripple effects are enormous, having consequences for topsoil, the purity and abundance of water, the health of our atmosphere, and the well-being of all human and animal life. 

About a decade before the first Earth Day, American agriculture began speeding up its slow turn from family-operated, pasture-based systems – with animals on the land, and in numbers that were manageable for the farmer, and for the health of the environment – to an increasingly industrialized process. So began the era of factory farming.

The emergence of factory farming has produced mass suffering for animals, but it’s also been the bane of family farming and rural communities. Within the last 35 years, the nation has seen the loss of 90 percent of its pig farmers, 88 percent of dairy farmers, and 95 percent of egg farmers as they’ve been run out of business. All the while, the remaining farms got bigger and bigger and confined more and more animals per farm.

Within the last decade, we’re finally seeing a robust counter-movement to factory farming, with animal welfare advocates, environmental advocates, and rural community advocates – including family farmers – questioning this broken system of food production and seeking to put animals back on the land.

Over the past several years, citizens and lawmakers in nine states have moved to outlaw various forms of extreme farm animal confinement. Within the last year or so, more than 50 of the nation’s food industry giants have committed to phasing out some of the cruelest practices that factory farms utilize. More people are eating local, and eating more plant-based foods. There is a strong movement in rural communities against Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs. The Global Animal Partnership and other certifiers are working with responsible farmers committed to raising animals under high standards of welfare, and helping them to secure markets.

In the end, it’s pretty clear that there’s just no way we can humanely and sustainably raise nine billion animals for food in the U.S. That’s why we are also urging consumers to eat less meat and other animal products. A number of the nation’s major environmental organizations are encouraging their members, and the public, to skip meat at least one day a week and join the Meatless Monday movement.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, raising animals for food is responsible for nearly one-fifth of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, and worldwide, we use more land to raise and feed farm animals than for any other purpose. Furthermore, the farm animal sector is a major consumer of scarce water, accounting for nearly one-third of the global agricultural water use.

Driving less, turning down the lights, and recycling are all enormously important. But so, too, is eating more plant-based foods and supporting sustainable agriculture at all levels. Our diet is something that each one of us controls. By eating with conscience, we can turn this system around, and Earth Day is a great day to make a new commitment, or to renew a commitment, to conscious eating.

Get The HSUS’ Guide to Meat-Free Meals here >>

Watch our Meatless Monday video:

In 2006, Michigan voters rejected the legislature’s plan to allow the target shooting of mourning doves, with 69 percent casting ballots in favor of maintaining the state’s century-long standard of protecting these gentle songbirds. Every county in the state – including the most Republican, rural districts – voted against the idea of dove hunting.

The HSUS

Now, in an effort to block a citizen referendum to maintain protection for wolves – one which garnered 253,000 registered voter signatures within a 70 day period – lawmakers have introduced a bill to give the seven political appointees (dominated by hunters and trappers) at the Natural Resources Commission authority to open up hunting seasons for doves, wolves and any other species they wish. Citizens be damned.

It’s a remarkable subversion of democratic decision-making, and it is an abuse of power, albeit a legal one.

In Tennessee, a different type of power play is at work.

There, one of the biggest stories of 2012 was HSUS’ undercover investigation of a Hall of Fame horse trainer named Jackie McConnell abusing Tennessee walking horses, in order to give him an advantage in the show ring. McConnell bashed horses in the head with a wooden plank, applied caustic chemicals to their feet, and otherwise caused them so much pain that they would exaggerate their gait and win McConnell another ribbon.

Newspapers and horse lovers in Tennessee and throughout the nation expressed deep disgust over the barbaric abuse of horses by McConnell and his assistants, and lauded The HSUS for exposing this sickening abuse.

Yesterday, the Tennessee Senate passed an ag-gag bill to prevent us from ever finding another Jackie McConnell in Tennessee. Rather than crack down on abuse, the legislature is seeking to make it a crime to conduct a long-term investigation of abuse at any farm – for horses, puppy mills, or farm animals.

The state’s largest paper, The Tennessean, wrote today, “It’s clear to anyone to [sic] looks at how the Humane Society videotaped Jackie McConnell’s soring of walking horses, that the case would have unraveled if it had to be rushed, at risk to the safety of the person working undercover. This bill is no more than an attempt to intimidate animal-cruelty opponents.”

The bill’s authors, one an industrial pig farmer and the other a livestock auction owner, say they oppose animal cruelty. But that’s laughable. They’ve both been on the record as opposing the most modest animal welfare reforms. For instance, Sen. Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville, voted against legislation just two weeks ago that would increase penalties for cockfighting.

The only antidote to this kind of abuse is public participation. No lawmaker or legislature should get away with these manipulations of the fundamentals of a civil society, including First Amendment freedoms and democratic decision-making.

When I was a kid, the first broader animal protection issue that I connected with was the drowning of dolphins in massive tuna nets. I told my mom that I didn’t want to eat tuna if dolphins had to die.

Little did I know that as an adult, I’d still be working on this issue. And here at The HSUS and Humane Society International, we’ve kept fighting, through the ups and downs, in order to prevent the drowning of extraordinary numbers of dolphins – with some estimates running in excess of 7 million killed in the last few decades. I am glad to report we are on the upswing, and it’s my hope that the recent gains are made permanent.

The “dolphin-safe” label gained support in the late 1980s as consumers expressed anger and disgust over the image of hundreds of thousands of dead and dying dolphins suffocating and drowning in purse seine nets. For reasons still unknown, schools of tuna in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean frequently swim beneath large groups of dolphins. Since around 1960, tuna fishermen used this association to target tuna schools by chasing the dolphins until they were exhausted, and then dropping a football field size net in a big circle around them to catch the tuna swimming below. The dolphin-safe label promised consumers that the tuna had been caught without deliberately chasing and setting nets on dolphins. By June 1, 1994, the entire U.S. tuna fleet was dolphin-safe, and all tuna in the U.S. had to meet that standard, and be labeled as such. 

Naomi Rose/The HSUS

In the mid-1990s, I, along with my colleagues, tried to stop legislation that sought to weaken our well-known and trusted definition of the dolphin-safe label. Pressure came from tuna fishing interests outside the U.S., specifically Mexico, which wanted access to the U.S. market and our label while continuing to set nets on dolphins. It was political double-speak – kind of like horse slaughter being humane for horses – and our adversaries were well funded and effective. But thanks to the heroic and skilled efforts of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., there was a provision added to the new law that blocked the amendment to weaken the label from taking effect if science showed that chasing and encircling dolphins negatively impacted their populations. 

The Commerce Department found in 1999, and again in 2002, that this fishing method did not have an adverse impact on dolphins. However, the weakened definition never went into effect because The HSUS, along with environmental organizations, successfully challenged the government’s finding in U.S. courts as not having met the requirement of the law. 

The U.S. government appealed to a federal appellate court, and in 2007 it rejected the administration’s conclusion that scientific evidence of harm was lacking and that in fact the science strongly indicated that targeting dolphins was hurting the population. The label remained unchanged. We prevailed.

But the story didn’t end there.

Mexico, dissatisfied with the ruling, challenged the U.S. position at the World Trade Organization, claiming that our dolphin-safe label was an unfair trade barrier. The HSI submitted an amicus brief in support of the lawfulness of the U.S. label, but on Sept. 15, 2011, a WTO dispute panel released its ruling on the matter, finding that the dolphin-safe label did not comply with WTO rules. The U.S. appealed the adverse ruling, but the Appellate Body ruled that our law violated WTO rules, stating that it unfairly discriminated against Mexico.

The U.S. has chosen to comply with the WTO ruling, and, on April 5, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a proposed rule to revise the regulations governing the dolphin-safe label. However, instead of seeking to dismantle our dolphin safe standards, the Obama administration decided to expand the scope of these standards to all oceans with tuna fisheries and to all countries seeking to import tuna. This is a huge victory for consumers in the U.S., and dolphins everywhere. This rule is open for public comment until May 6, and NOAA is aiming to publish a final rule in July 2013.

Comment and show your support for the rule here »

I don’t believe that this latest decision ends the tuna dolphin story. It is possible that Mexico will again appeal to the WTO, claiming that the new U.S. rule fails to properly implement the Appellate Body’s ruling; but if they do, we’ll be there to fight for the dolphins yet again. At the end of the day, what is most important is that we have fought off every attempt to weaken the label. And in the nearly 20 years since I first worked on this issue in Congress, I can now say that we helped strengthen protections for dolphins in every ocean and tuna fishery.

There’s been so much public condemnation of horse abusers since The HSUS released its jarring undercover video last year showing Hall of Fame Tennessee walking horse trainer Jackie McConnell and his stewards intentionally injuring horses in order to create the “Big Lick” gait that wins ribbons at competitive shows. The practice of “soring” has been illegal since 1970, but the industry tolerated widespread criminal conduct and the statute and its enforcement have not been sufficient to deter this pattern of cruelty and law-breaking.

On Friday, Reps. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., introduced legislation in the U.S. House to strengthen the outmoded 40-year-old Horse Protection Act. The Prevent All Soring Tactics Act, H.R. 1518, would end this industry’s self-regulation enforcement scheme. Horses will be checked at shows for evidence of soring by inspectors trained and licensed by the United States Department of Agriculture, not by industry insiders. House Resolution 1518 will also ban action devices and stacks – devices implicated for their role in the soring process - as the American Veterinary Medical Association, American Association of Equine Practitioners and other national organizations have called for, and which the United States Equestrian Federation has already banned from all of its licensed competitions. For the horses, and for those who wish to participate in Tennessee walking horse shows with sound horses and fair judging, the stronger provisions that this bill will add to the HPA are a lifeline.

Chad Sisneros/The HSUS
The artificial, high-stepping gait called the "Big Lick."

While our polling shows widespread disapproval of soring and support for state and federal laws to fortify the prohibition on soring, there is a brazen move afoot in the Tennessee legislature to make it a crime to conduct these undercover investigations, by requiring that footage be turned over to authorities just as an investigation is starting. Such a legal requirement would terminate an investigation prematurely and it would give law enforcement an undeveloped case. It’s an attempt to stifle these sorts of investigations to document abuse on farms.

The trainers and owners of these abused animals have had decades to clean house, yet the majority of winning trainers in the walking horse industry have been cited for violations of the HPA over and over again, with no apparent deterrent effect. The American people have seen the cruelty that Tennessee walking show horses are subjected to, and they want it to end.

The HSUS will continue to call out the perpetrators of abuse for their deceptive statements and cruel, illegal acts — please join us and call your representative in the U.S. Congress and urge them to co-sponsor H.R. 1518. And we’ll be fighting the maneuvers of state lawmakers who want to cover up abuse and make it a crime to document it.

 

P.S. Tennessee’s anti-whistleblower bill, H.B. 1191/S.B. 1248, is expected to come up in the state Senate as early as Tuesday of this week. While there are some great champions of animal welfare in the Tennessee legislature, there are too many lawmakers who defend just about any sort of animal exploitation. Rep. Andy Holt, the House sponsor, is an industrial hog farmer who is actively working to open horse slaughter plants in the state. The Senate sponsor, Delores Gresham, represents the district where The HSUS undercover investigation of Jackie McConnell took place, and she’s the owner of a stockyard. Both legislators absurdly claim that this legislation will prevent abuse, yet both of them voted against the Animal Fighting Enforcement Act last week to strengthen penalties for dogfighters and cockfighters. Their decision to align themselves with the cockfighting community speaks volumes about their true intentions.

China has four times as many people as the United States, even though the countries are about the same physical size. China has never had a philanthropic sector devoted to animal protection, so there’s been no long-term warming up of the people on the issue of welfare. Those two factors – an enormous human population, and few restraints or influences to guide people on animal welfare – have created a very dangerous situation for animals. China has not only been implicated as the world’s leading consumer of elephant ivory, rhino horn, shark fins, tiger parts, and so many other wildlife trade-related products, but it’s also become the biggest factory farming nation in the world. 

I’ve asked our own Peter Li, China Policy Specialist for Humane Society International, for his thoughts about waterlogged dead pigs and bird flu that have recently been in the news in the country.

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Food safety and public health concerns are once again big news in China. In March, the carcasses of thousands of pigs were found floating down the Huangpu River in Shanghai, raising serious concerns about the safety of the water supply. Soon afterward, a new strain of bird flu, H7N9, was reported in Shanghai and adjacent areas. The virus has infected 43 people in China, killing 11 of them, and caused the government to cull large numbers of ducks and other birds in order to prevent further spread of the disease. Animal protection advocates around the globe are calling on Chinese officials to euthanize these animals as humanely as possible during this mass culling operation.

Such incidents once again draw attention to challenges facing the nation’s expanding farm animal sector. China is already the world’s largest egg and meat producer, and continues to further industrialize its production systems – pushing animals off the land and onto factory farms. Egg laying hens and pregnant sows are frequently confined in barren battery cages and gestation crates that prevent the animals from moving freely or experiencing most of their natural behaviors. 

However, there is a burgeoning animal welfare movement in China, and reason to think that it will gain traction. A growing number of these groups are directing their efforts toward improving farm animal welfare. In partnership with Humane Society International, Chinese activists succeeded in shutting down a massive foie gras project in Southeast China in 2012, and “Meat-free Monday” will soon be introduced to many Chinese college campuses.

We are working to improve animal welfare and stem the spread of factory farming in China and other parts of Asia.  You can count on this being a priority for us over the next few years. 

Yesterday, President Obama released his 2014 budget, the latest proposal in the back-and-forth between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill on federal spending. Amid all of the items in the $3 trillion-plus budget there were more than a few kernels of good news for animal advocates. The president proposed to Congress that it defund any inspections of horse slaughter plants in the U.S. He also proposed more funding for chimpanzee sanctuaries to accelerate the transfer of government-owned chimps in laboratories to much safer, healthier, better environments. And he proposed more money for enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act and the Horse Protection Act.

If Congress approves the horse slaughter defund language – and there’s no guarantee that it will – it would bar placement of federal workers in plants, a requirement to certify the horse meat for sale. This would arrest plans by horse slaughter enthusiasts to open plants in the first place, and it would reinstate language that was in agriculture spending bills for several years as a bulwark against the reopening of plants that hadn’t operated since 2007. Obama’s move should give a lift to authorizing federal legislation – the Safeguard American Food Exports Act, H.R. 1094/S. 541 – to ban horse slaughter and the export of live horses for slaughter.

The administration took another step forward for chimpanzees in laboratories by asking Congress to give the National Institutes of Health the authority to keep providing funds to the national chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimp Haven, for retirement and care of chimps no longer being used for research. The CHIMP Act, a law that passed 13 years ago and created the national sanctuary system, has a cap on NIH spending for sanctuaries, and it’s about to be hit. Chimpanzee retirement is a cost-saving measure because it is less expensive to care for the animals in sanctuary than in the barren laboratories that currently warehouse them using NIH funding, but fixing the cap is, ironically, critical to saving federal dollars.

A committee of independent scientific experts recently recommended the retirement of more than 300 government-owned chimpanzees to Chimp Haven. The NIH should be allowed to use its resources more efficiently and effectively and get these chimpanzees to the sanctuary they deserve.

We were also glad to see that the president’s budget proposed significantly increased funding for enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act and the Horse Protection Act. There was a specific reference to additional funding being needed to enforce the long awaited “retail pet stores” rule. This proposed rule would close a loophole in Animal Welfare Act regulations by requiring puppy mill operators who sell puppies and kittens over the Internet, by mail or by phone to be licensed and inspected, just like those who sell to pet stores. Many of the most problematic puppy mills have escaped oversight for decades by selling online, due to this pre-Internet loophole.   

Congress should adopt all of these animal protection provisions and spending limitations in its Fiscal Year 2014 appropriations legislation. The lab chimps, the horses pushed to the slaughter pipeline, the sored horses in the Tennessee Walking Horse industry, and the puppy mill dogs sold through Internet websites need this relief.

I’ve written multiple times about the efforts of agribusiness interests to make it a crime to take photos or video footage of animals on factory farms, puppy mills, or even a horse stable—the so-called “ag-gag” bills, introduced in 12 states this year. Now, coming out of Michigan, we have a different kind of power grab: Just two weeks after citizens gathered more than a quarter million signatures to nullify an act of the legislature to authorize wolf hunting and trapping, the leading anti-wolf legislator in the state has proposed a new bill that would go even further and attempt to derail the people’s referendum.

Sen. Tom Casperson’s bill, S.B. 288, is so radical and far-reaching that it would also enable the repeal of one of the most popular ballot measures in Michigan history: the measure to bar the target shooting of mourning doves. Voters rejected mourning dove hunting in a landslide vote in 2006, with all 83 counties and all 110 House and 38 Senate districts, including Sen. Casperson’s, siding with the idea of dove protection.

Instead of accepting that 2006 landslide vote on doves and the outpouring of grassroots support for wolf protection, Sen. Casperson’s bill would allow the unelected, seven-member Michigan Natural Resources Commission to add animals to the list of game species to be hunted for sport or trophies, at any time and without public input.
 
So hungry to wipe out wolves, these politicians are even diluting their own power to pass game species policy by granting this authority to a handful of political appointees, who are accountable to no one. If passed, S.B. 288 means that this unelected panel could ignore the will of the people, and allow wolf hunting or dove hunting, regardless of what the voters say, or have said, on these matters.
 
And it won’t stop there. Sandhill cranes and other rare wildlife species—and perhaps even feral cats, as was proposed in neighboring Wisconsin—could be listed by the hunter-dominated commission as game animals under S.B. 288.  
 
S.B. 288 is a short-sighted and unprecedented usurpation of power.  Every Michigan resident should pick up the phone and tell their legislators to reject this attack on Michigan voters and on the democratic process. Click here to look up your Michigan state legislator's name and phone number. Then, click here to send a follow-up message reiterating your opposition to this bill.

An unauthorized video got millions of views online and through traditional media platforms last week showing the Rutgers University men’s basketball head coach shoving, grabbing, and throwing basketballs at several of the squad’s players in practice and also directing homophobic slurs at them. That video stirred controversy about the conduct of this coach, and it’s led to his firing and to a public apology from him and the university.

Fortunately, we’ve heard no movement, on behalf of the NCAA or any athletic conference, to ban videotaping of basketball practice at the collegiate level.

The HSUS

Yet that’s exactly what the agribusiness industry is telling us should happen with videos exposing abuse at their operations. In response to kickings, beatings, draggings, live-skinning, and other forms of shocking animal abuse captured by HSUS investigators and those from a handful of other animal-protection organizations, leading agriculture organizations are working with their legislative allies to introduce and promote whistleblower suppression bills (so-called “ag-gag” legislation) in nearly a dozen states to make it a crime to take unauthorized pictures on farms, or to apply for a job if their applicant is affiliated with an animal protection group. Yesterday, The New York Times reported on the issue, and dozens of major newspapers throughout the country—from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette to the Bakersfield Californian to the Indianapolis Star—have condemned this attempt to prevent the public from getting any view of what happens on factory farms and other animal-use operations. Last year, three states—Iowa, Missouri, and Utah—passed such bills, on top of bills enacted in Kansas, Montana, and North Dakota to accomplish the same goal.

As The Times reported, it was the HSUS videos of horse soring, the abuse of downer cows, the lifelong immobilization of breeding pigs, and other unsettling conduct that triggered that counter-maneuver by the industry. In so many of these cases, HSUS investigations have produced criminal convictions, the shutdown of slaughter plants, and even, in the case of our famous Hallmark undercover operation, massive meat recalls. But in other cases, the goal was not to produce a criminal complaint, but to expose routine, systemic abuses of animals that are legal. 

There is a complex “politics of visibility” at play in the struggle over these attempts to suppress investigations and whistleblower efforts at farms and slaughter plants. As the New School political scientist Timothy Pachirat explains in his striking recent work, “Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight,” the mass production and slaughter of animals for food in industrial society relies on a deliberate walling off of the entire process of raising and killing from the consumer. Highly industrialized production and slaughter now occurs on an increasingly small concentration of massive facilities in out-of-the way places. More specifically, the raising and killing occurs in highly compartmentalized, elaborately secured facilities, even designed to thwart or complicate mandated government inspections. The spate of ag-gag bills represents an extension of that mentality of maintaining the physical isolation of the facilities and keeping the images out of sight for the millions of people in whose name the work of producing and killing is being undertaken.

It is true that many people don’t want to see what goes on in the business of killing animals for food, or raising them by the millions in terrible conditions, since the images often cause revulsion and may prompt consumers to examine what happens in the supply chain. In many ways, the factory farming industry depends on the public disassociation of the production and marketing and consumption sides of the business. It is the job of The HSUS and other animal-welfare groups to promote an association of thought for consumers, since so many billions of animals are caught up in the food production system. Consumers should know what happens to the animals who become food. And it’s a moral duty for The HSUS, and indeed for all of society, to expose unlawful conduct as well as lawful conduct that is inconsistent with basic standards of humanity and decency. 

Mr. Pachirat himself concealed his identity as a researcher in applying for a job and then conducting his academic inquiry while working at an Omaha slaughtering plant for six months, where he started as a “liver hanger.” Perhaps he would have been arrested if the current ag-gag legislation introduced in Nebraska had been in place when he did his undercover work.