Freedom to Farm Act: Shielding Slaughterhouses and Meatpacking From Public Scrutiny

This sounds like something out of a country with a “Ministry of Truth.” And these developments are also nauseating.

            In an effort to keep the eyes of the public out of their slaughterhouses, meat processing plants, and over-crowded feed lots, the meat and dairy industries are pushing legislation in several states that would make it a crime to notify the public as to what actually goes on in the production of our food. Bills circulating in the state houses of Indiana, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania would make it a crime to take videos at agricultural facilities. Similar legislation is being proposed in California and several other states. The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a business backed conservative “think tank,” is providing much of the push for these laws.

            These “Ag Gag” laws are in response to academics, journalists, and activists who have shown us slaughterhouse conditions that would be recognizable to Sinclair Lewis, who chronicled his experiences in the meat packing yards of Chicago just over a century ago. Modern day men and women in the mold of Lewis have taken videos of cows being cruelly prodded with forklifts and veal calves being skinned alive. New School University assistant professor of politics Timothy Pachirat spent several years working in modern slaughterhouses and meatpacking in Omaha, Nebraska. Without the veneer of fiction that Lewis used in “The Jungle,” he describes the conditions of modern slaughterhouse work and his often stomach-churning experiences with his recent book “Every Twelve Seconds.” The book’s publication prompted the Iowa legislature to pass and the governor to sign HF 589, which makes it a criminal offence for a journalist or activist to get a job at a slaughterhouse or other agricultural facility with the intent of exposing the conditions of the places that bring us much of our food.

            In the last 30 years our food has become less safe to eat. Meat processing is now performed on a grand scale, with hundreds or thousands of pigs or cows being processed at the same time. The tainted meat from one animal now has the ability to taint thousands of pounds of hamburger or sausage shipped to dozens of states. You would think that this would prompt greater scrutiny by our government for the safety of our food, but budget cuts to the FDA that started with the Reagan administration have lead to fewer FDA workers inspecting more and more food.

            Exposing cruel or unsanitary conditions at a slaughterhouse or stockyard should make lawmakers and policy makers take notice, passing stricter food standards or providing more food inspectors, but in true “ignorance is strength” fashion, states are giving greater cover to meat and dairy producers to operate without public scrutiny. Adding to this Orwellian scenario, some of these laws label those who expose the dark underbelly of producing pork bellies as terrorists. That’s right. Taking a video of unsanitary meat processing puts you in the same league as Osama bin Laden.

And while we see less and less of how our food is produced, more people will get sick and more people will die from food poisoning. Thanks a lot, Ministry of Truth!