Worthy of the most
absurd of The Onion headlines, one
that would even set Orwell’s head spinning, reads Undercover Activist Who Exposed Animal Cruelty Is Cited For Animal Cruelty. The undercover activist, Taylor Radig, went
undercover to document animal abuse at the Quanah Cattle Company in Kersey,
Colorado. The videos she took showed employees kicking, throwing, and
performing other abusive acts on young calves. After the activist group she was
working with, Compassion Over Killing, released the video, employees at the
cattle facility were fired.
As
the Weld County Sheriff’s Office cited three employees of the Quanah
Cattle Company with misdemeanor animal cruelty, the office went on to charge
Radig with the same charge. According to Lindsay Abrams in Slate:
“Radig’s
failure to report the alleged abuse of the animals in a timely manner adheres
to the definition of acting with negligence and substantiates the charge
Animal Cruelty,” a statement signed by the sheriff explained. They’re also
accusing her of having participated in the abuse. If convicted, she faces
up to 18 months in jail.
This sort of reasoning
on the part of the Weld County sheriff’s department would seem to indict just
about any whistleblower reporting any sort of corporate criminality. The
sheriff could go so far as to indict police or FBI agents that infiltrate
terrorist groups or organized crime.
Colorado,
where a great deal of today’s meat packing occurs, currently has no “ag-gag”
laws, legal restrictions on activists or reporters that make it difficult or
impossible to report animal cruelty, unsafe working conditions, or unsanitary
conditions or practices at slaughterhouses and meat pacing facilities. With
sheriff departments like the one in Weld County, however, it seems that the big
agricultural interests don’t need them. They can just charge the whistleblowers
with the crimes that they report.
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