Update: ‘Ag Gag’ Bill Stalls in New Hampshire
Update: Thanks to all of you who responded to PETA’s action alert, New Hampshire House Bill (H.B.) 110 has stalled in committee, meaning that investigators can continue to uncover cruelty on factory farms in the state. H.B. 110 is likely to come up again this fall, so please keep checking back here to learn how you can help PETA continue to defeat this and other attempts to shield abusers from exposure!
Originally posted on January 31st, 2013:
How badly do corporate animal abusers want to keep the public from knowing what happens on factory farms and in slaughterhouses? Bad enough to enlist accomplices in government to try to stop any efforts to document their cruelty. But after a New Hampshire state legislator reportedly made a false allegation about PETA in support of his bill to block undercover investigations, we’re more determined than ever to make sure that animal suffering can be documented and the abusers are held accountable.
New Hampshire—You Can Handle the Truth
PETA has written Rep. Robert Haefner, the sponsor of House Bill (H.B.) 110, New Hampshire’s “ag gag” bill (which would require evidence of abuse to be turned over to authorities in 24 hours, shutting down long-term undercover investigations), asking him to retract a false statement that he reportedly made about our Aviagen Turkeys, Inc., investigation. PETA turned over evidence of animal abuse from its investigation of Aviagen’s West Virginia turkey factory farms two business days after the end of the investigation—not 13 months, as Haefner allegedly claimed at a public hearing on the bill last week. Within three months of receiving the video footage, grand jurors issued the first-ever felony indictments for cruelty to turkeys on factory farms. All three former Aviagen workers were later convicted. At the hearing, Haefner used this false claim to justify to New Hampshire citizens his proposed bill to stop long-term undercover investigations on factory farms, according to witnesses.
Investigations conducted by PETA and other organizations on factory farms have been instrumental in opening people’s eyes to the cruelty inherent in intensive animal agriculture and have led to successful prosecutions of the perpetrators, but Haefner’s bill would make it practically impossible for whistleblowers and undercover investigators to secure sufficient evidence to show a pattern of cruelty, as preferred by police and prosecutors.
