Factory Farms vs. Video Cameras
Will the mainstream media side with the animals?
The factory farm lobby in Iowa is pushing hard for legislation to make it a crime to shoot undercover video of cruelty to animals. But in doing this, they may have shot themselves in the foot.
What the factory farmers tried to portray as a fringe operation by a small group of “animal rights activists” has blossomed into something much more than that. Now the mainstream media are coming aboard.
The issue is becoming as much a case of corrupt corporations trying to muzzle whistleblowers and reporters as it is to do with “animal activism.”
Today, an article in The Atlantic magazine asks:
“Who will control what we see? Iowa’s attempt to ban undercover videographers from documenting animal cruelty is merely the latest battle in an ongoing all-out war.”
This “war” has some of the hallmarks of the revolutions we’ve begun to see unfold in the Middle East when people who are fed up with the cruelty and corruption of their governments start using the power of the Internet to put the spotlight on those governments. Officials try to fight back by suppressing the “activists”, but soon the mainstream international media pick up the story and then the proverbial cat is out of the bag.
That’s what we’re beginning to see in the shocking revelations of what goes on inside the factory farms.
Last month, we saw how undercover video from Australia of the horrifying practices of slaughterhouses in Indonesia had pushed the Australian government to ban Australian cattle ranches from sending their cows to Indonesia.
Now factory farms in this country are on the run. And, as Ronald Reagan might have put it, they can run but they can’t hide.