Calif. bill to thwart animal investigations killed

"SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A California bill that would have limited undercover farm animal abuse investigations has been pulled by its author amid stiff and growing opposition.

A spokesman for Republican Jim Patterson, of Fresno, said he pulled the bill just three hours before it was to be voted on by the Assembly Agriculture Committee on Wednesday. The spokesman, Mike Zimmerman, did not say why."
Calif. bill to thwart animal investigations killed | Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register | visaliatimesdelta.com

Several states have passed bills prohibiting photographing or video recording animal abuse and other measures making it harder to expose abuse. Such bills are Immoral and unconstitutional in my opinion, exposing the truth should never be illegal.

Could go either way really. Some individuals may be seeking fame via taping themselves abusing animals. Facing the possibility of being arrested/fined, those individuals may not proliferate their animal beating videos, and go back to taking videos of their friends "if they have any" fighting each other.

I believe the intent of those bills in other states was to prevent filmmakers and budding Ted Bundy's from filming animal abuse to sell to the sick and distorted. However, in this case, that it was destined to be part of an aggie bill, they were trying to shield the farmers from the animal rights idiots. To be honest I'd say the trespassing laws already in place handle that quite nicely.

These laws were intended to protect agricultural interests from exposes revealing abuse of animals. It has nothing to do with people recording their friends or themselves abusing animals for kicks. That is already clearly illegal.

Several agricultural operations have been fined due to the abuses that have been caught on camera. Preventing the whistleblowers from exposing illegal and unethical behavior is pay to play politics at its worst. Go to YouTube and you can see some of the videos. I don't think many people would defend some of the cruelty that can be seen. Its not just PETA type fanatics who hate unnecessary and fully preventable cruelty towards animals. People have a right to know how the animals they pay to eat are treated.

I am as far away from a PETA person as you can get but I fully support humane treatment of all livestock.