I like wording. Editors of the Journal of Animal Ethics are using the phrase ‘sinister’ to describe Ag-gag laws. These new laws that have cropped up in at least a couple of states criminalize undercover video and audio recordings of abuse on factory farms. The actual goal of the laws are not to really to protect the privacy of the landowners. The goal is to hide abuse from the eyes of the public.
Sinister is right. These factory farms want to hide their practices. And without a means to uncover cruelty, the cruelty will go on.
A received the following press release concerning this topic:
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U.S. AG-GAG LAWS “SINISTER” SAY LEADING ACADEMICS
Leading academics have branded United States “Ag-gag” laws, now in force in Iowa and Utah and awaiting consideration in other U.S. states, that make it a criminal offence to photograph or make a sound or video recording of an animal facility without the owner’s permission, as “sinister”.
The editors of the Journal of Animal Ethics (JAE) recently published by the University of Illinois Press Professors Andrew Linzey and Priscilla N. Cohn note that the objections to these laws seem to have been “insufficiently regarded in the preceding debates in these states, so perhaps they need to be spelled out”. They list five reasons for concern: