Please scroll down to send your NE state legislators a letter asking them to oppose the new ag gag bill.

On January 17, 2013, Sen. Tyson Larson (R-NE 40th District, including Knox County) introduced Legislature Bill 204, an ag-gag bill that would make it a Class IV felony for journalists, activists and employees to conduct investigations into animal cruelty, worker abuses, environmental protection violations and food safety problems at factory farms. The bill's sole purpose is to prevent the public from learning what goes on at factory farms.

If LB 204 had been law in 2004, we'd never have known about the abuses exposed in this video from an undercover investigation by the Humane Farming Association, an investigation that forced the closing of the HKY Inc. hog farm in Wausa, NE, in Knox County.

Don't let Nebraska legislators make it a crime to expose the horrors of factory farming! Please sign the letter below asking NE state legislators to oppose LB 204.

Ag gag bill sponsor Sen. Larson also promotes killing horses for meat and has made it his mission to fight and attempt to discredit groups like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) that are exposing, and creating sustainable alternatives to the horrors of factory farming. Instead of supporting the Farm to Fitness program, a collaborative effort of the HSUS and the Nebraska Farmers Union, Sen. Larson attacked the Nebraska Farmers Union saying, “Any Nebraska agricultural group working with anti-animal agricultural groups, such as HSUS, is not an agricultural group that has the best interests of Nebraska’s farmers and ranchers at heart and will struggle to be taken seriously as a viable group within the Nebraska Legislature.”

You can help prevent this law from passing!

Last year, lawmakers in 10 states proposed ag-gag laws. Only three of the laws passed. Consumers and animal welfare activists prevented ag-gag laws from passing in the seven other states by creating a public outcry that force legislators to vote against the bills.

Nationally, 71% of voters oppose ag-gag laws, according to a poll by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Ag-gag laws are not only threaten the welfare of farm animals, but they also prevent the exposure of environmental violations, workers' rights violations and food safety issues. Please sign the letter below today, and forward it to as many people as possible

Why ag-gag laws are dangerous to animals, humans and the environment

• Animal Welfare. Ag-gag laws are a direct threat to animal welfare. We know that animals are often cruelly treated in factory farms and slaughterhouses. Documentation of this treatment not only helps educate the public about farm animal abuse, but also influences industry and government entities to make real changes for farm animals.
• Food Safety. Ag-gag laws threaten our food supply: Various exposés of factory farms and slaughterhouses have revealed the extent to which our meat, eggs and milk are mishandled. Mishandling animal products, including mishandling farm animals while they are alive, invites health risks including salmonella, mad cow disease and other potentially fatal illnesses that may be transmitted to consumers.
• Control over Food Choices. Ag-gag laws are a direct threat to marketplace transparency. At a time when Americans are increasingly invested in knowing more about where their food comes from and how it is made, these laws threaten our ability to control what we bring into our homes and the food we put in our bodies. All Americans should have the right to know the basic conditions under which their food is produced.
• Workers' Rights. This legislation often seeks to criminalize the recording of sounds or images in animal facilities, no matter the content. Factory farms, slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities are physically and emotionally difficult places to work. Farm investigations have the potential to expose serious worker abuse and other illegal or unethical conduct on the part of employees or supervisors.
• Free Speech. Some ag-gag bills seek not just to criminalize recording, but even the possession and distribution of images recorded on animal facilities—and some seek to criminalize misrepresenting oneself on job applications (which, while possibly an act warranting termination of employment, should generally not be a crime). These provisions pose serious First Amendment threats.
• Environmental Damage. In the United States, 99 percent of food animals are raised in factory farms, where large numbers of animals are housed together, generally in close confinement. Huge amounts of waste are generated, the improper storage and disposal of which threatens our soil and water. While state and federal laws require large farms to minimize their environmental damage, farms have been found flagrantly violating these requirements. Undercover investigations offer an effective way to expose such violations.

Source: American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Please sign the letter below to your state legislators urging them to oppose LB 204. Thank you!