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I'm mixed on this. For background, I'm from Idaho and the son of a dairyman in this state. I know the intimate details of how this law came about, I know the

I'm mixed on this. For background, I'm from Idaho and the son of a dairyman in this state. I know the intimate details of how this law came about, I know the dairyman whose operation was filmed, and I've seen the film. From the viewpoint of the guys in ag, their concern is more about the lies that got spilled out over the initial film, and the death threats that came afterwards. Couple of side facts: * some of the employees were rightfully jailed for animal cruelty. * the dairyman in question has been receiving death threats ever since, even tho he is not personally responsible for the actions films, and he fired the offending employees soon after. (note, this is not a small dairyman, he has +300 employees, you can't personally monitor everyone all of the time). * the film has been redubbed constantly to attack other operations -- even tho they weren't filmed. * Most of the dairymen in this state are sole operators, or family owned. If you say "corporate owned farm", you aren't talking about my region, or we have a difference of opinion as to what constitutes a corporation. The Good: * it was a bad law, it needed to be revoked, even the dairymen in this state were uneasy about it. What got it passed quickly were all the death threats against the owner. Lawmakers were very concerned about that spreading. The Bad: * The dairymen in the state aren't worried about filming, they are worried about lies coming from it. Some groups are actively hell-bent against them. I've seen them, I've talked with them. The worst have no problem saying anything, because there won't be repercussions. * As most of the dairies are really sole operators, they are very concerned about their reputation and having that get away from them. Often the dairymen see it as "someone else's lies against them in a world where no one is going to believe them". I understand someone will see what I wrote and say I'm full of shit, oh well I guess. But understand, these people are my friends and family. I see and hear their struggles, and I watch them take care of their animals. Most actually do care for them, but at the same time, have to struggle with running a business that depends on those animals. You don't work with animals because you hate animals.

astrocat 11y ago
Can someone elucidate why existing defamation laws don't cover this already?
- tedunangst 11y ago
  Does the filmmaker have enough money to cover the farmer's losses? And does the farmer have enough money to hold out until they get paid?
  - netfire 11y ago
    So, are you suggesting we should eliminate or limit 1st amendment rights in cases where the parties involved in defamation wouldn't have the money to cover the defamed's losses? If the film is popular (and therefore does more damage), the filmmaker will probably have the means to adequately compensate the farmer. If it isn't popular, it probably won't do much damage to the farmer. Limiting free speech isn't a good solution.
    - tedunangst 11y ago
      I withdraw my suggestion.
- cwbrandsma 11y ago
  You can only sue for defamation if know who the culprit is. On the internet it is relatively easy to remain anonymous. Case in point: the dairy abuse video that was shot (let agree, it was bad). I've seen it rework and targeted at a milk creamery in Oregon (all via YouTube and Facebook). The video state that this was how the Oregon creamery treated its cows. Couple problems: the dairy wasn't in Oregon, it was in Idaho. The dairy in Idaho doesn't sell to the creamery in Oregon. And the creamery in Oregon DOESN'T OWN ANY COWS. They contract their milk from dairymen in Oregon.
  - prawn 11y ago
    Wouldn't surprise me if someone making videos and submitting to YouTube slipped up and identifying info was available. Did the dairy in question pursue this case or assume it was too hard to identify someone?
rosser 11y ago
Just like with police abuses, the fix for the problem is to shine as bright a light as possible on it until it's understood and can be addressed. For many people, at least, a clear understanding that not all cops are bad actors — that, in fact, the bad actors constitute an overwhelming minority of the population. (But also, unfortunately, that the problem in that case is exacerbated by the "thin blue line".) Blocking people from talking about it — you know, "prior restraint" — is emphatically not the solution.
- troym 11y ago
  > that, in fact, the bad actors constitute an overwhelming minority of the population This survey contradicts that assertion: http://www.aele.org/loscode2000.html http://www.aele.org/loscode2000.html From the survey: `In response to “Please describe the first time you witnessed misconduct by another employee but took no action,” 46 percent (532) advised they had witnessed misconduct by another employee, but concealed what they knew.` If we can trust the survey results, methodology, etc, the minority of which you speak is 46%.
  - cafard 11y ago
    One would need to know what the misconduct consisted of, in order to judge what this means. Is the misconduct accepting free coffee at the 7-11, or is it beating a prisoner?
  - rosser 11y ago
    I'm specifically making a distinction between the bad actors — people who commit an overtly abusive act — and the "thin blue line", which is cops who are aware of the abuses, but conceal or misrepresent what they've seen. The 46% you cite numbers among the latter. For all you know, though, the people those 46% are talking about having seen committing "misconduct" are the same folks over and over. I'm not downplaying police abuses, and I'm not excusing the people who don't speak up and call it out when it occurs, but I think it remains useful to make a distinction between them.
    - troym 11y ago
azakai 11y ago
I can understand that they are worried about lies being told, but the solution to malicious liars is not to stifle free speech in general. The fact is, sadly, that in any free society freedom of speech will be misused by some people. And the fact remains that in this particular space, we do need people to be able to blow the whistle if something wrong is being done. We know that bad things do happen, and when they do, they can be horrifying. The animals have basically no defense but the conscience of the owner, and, should that fail, a whistleblower.
IndianAstronaut 11y ago
This might sound odd, but I don't think death threats are actually that serious. This is actually pretty routine if you post any remotely controversial video on Youtube or make any statements against any group. People seem to use these random threats to bolster their cause or use it to their advantage.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  Law and politics don't handle cultural change well. Politics could but doesn't; the law can't really -- the whole point of the law is stability.
marricks 11y ago
I'm a vegan (ergo completely opposed to your industry), but I get where you're coming from. It's your livelihood, and it's probably been your family's lively hood. Here's the thing though, the vast majority of where the US gets it's milk from is less of a farm nowadays and more of a factory, that's why milk production efficiency has shot up in the past 100 years --because we started treated these animals more and more like objects using practices such as "rape racks" to keep cows constantly pregnant and producing peak amounts of milk. We also bred them to produce so much milk their bodies are basically spent after 4 years (20% of their natural life span), and we kill them. We could quibble over minor differences in the numbers and terms but that's not my point, I'm pretty sure you can agree those are common practices on farms where the majority of US citizens get their milk. Capitalism has gotten right up in this farming eked every ounce of efficiency out of these animals so there's no space for any compassion. There's so much broken there, and I don't want you and your friends jobless, I want you on better jobs not based on exploiting poor animals. Hell, we give billions of dollars in subsidies to dairy farmers, that money should be spent helping transition. That's just my take, I'm sure you get exposed to a lot of the vocal minority vegans, the vegans I know don't hate the people, just the system.
- cwbrandsma 11y ago
  Couple good points in your comment, some not so good. But trust me, I appreciate your comments. On milk factories and breeding, yes. That is part of the current game. But I would argue that selective breeding has been done for centuries, we've just gotten better at it. Capitalism has basically forced dairymen to become more efficient -- which is good and bad. My grandfather's cows gave 40-50 lbs of milk per day, my father's cows give 80 (some up to 120). There are consequences when that happens. How you get there is better breeding and better feed (feed has a lot to do with it). On cow longevity, the lifespan of a dairy cow is actually a little longer than that, but the actual longevity it depends on the breed. Holsteins go for about 6 years (lets not kids ourselves, that is not a huge jump in longevity compared to your stated 4). As a comparison, the typical beef cow lives about 2 years. I would talk about veal....but even I don't eat veal. After 6 years the animal is "beefed", as kids we would called it "sold to McDonald's". My next door neighbor was a butcher, basically the only parts unused in a cow are the tail and the moo. Almost nothing goes to waist. Never heard of a "rape rack", I had to look it up. I know a lot of AI breeders as well, that isn't how it is done on the dairies I've seen. From what I've seen it is not necessary, it is pretty easy to get the job done. But, lets talk female cows...ok, lets bring in biology here, female herbivores of almost any herd species (cows, buffalo, goats, sheep, etc) don't have many periods if there are functioning males around. If those animals are ovulating, the males notice -- even the females notice and tell the males about them. On subsidies: most subsidies are "floors". No one gets money from the government unless the price of their product drops consistently below a set point. This happened for a brief period in 2009, and even then a lot of operations went out of business (which is by design actually). This isn't like farmers being paid to not farm (that happens -- ugg). But you also can't say the government is completely out of it either, because the government does buy a lot of milk product, usually powdered milk protein, which is often sent as aid to other countries. Finally, I don't know if I would say a that everything is broken, but lets agree that things could be better. Somewhere between the ideals and where we are now is probably a workable solution that is good for the cows and keeps people's livelihoods.
JulianMorrison 11y ago
A public broadcasting webcam or three might go a long way towards making it clear what's real and what's fantasy. For example, it would be simple to say "go to webcam.myfarm.com and you will see that the images in that movie don't even depict my farm."
geofft 11y ago
There are some echoes here, I think, of Sarah Jeong's thesis in The Internet of Garbage about how copyright laws aren't anti-harassment or privacy laws, how they make terrible anti-harassment or privacy laws, and how victims feel like they're the only option, which is just bad for everyone. Your friends need better support from society. Some of that support may be from the laws (against death threats, slander, etc.). Some of that support needs to come from outside the laws, in the form of more speech countering the incorrect speech, as well as in the form of norms on civilized behavior. Some of that needs to come from a greater willingness to talk about where the food we eat comes from, how it doesn't just show up magically on grocery store shelves. But bad laws won't help them in the long run, nor will they help society.
deciplex 11y ago
I'm from eastern WA myself and I know what you mean, but seriously: > The dairymen in the state aren't worried about filming, they are worried about lies coming from it. Libel laws already exist. We don't ban people from speaking because they might say something they could be held civilly liable for. I know suing people for libel is a pain in the ass (and apparently in Idaho it's much easier to just have your state legislature pass a law), but that's the price you pay to live in a free society.
cma 11y ago
> the film has been redubbed constantly to attack other operations -- even tho they weren't filmed. But.. filming the others was made illegal.
emcrazyone 11y ago
"he has +300 employees, you can't personally monitor everyone all of the time" This is complete and utter bullshit. The whole animal cruelty issue has been in the news for years and to say you did nothing to investigate your own operations or do anything to monitor the activity is negligence. I saw the video too! I have a friend in the Dairy business with around 150 employees. His entire operation is video monitored around the clock. I just don't buy arguments like this. I see them as excuses. Your friend may be a good person and all but not doing more to prevent the bad apples is just no excuse in my book. The sad thing is people need to be kept in check. For if the video never came out, this dairyman would probably have continue business as usual since he never bothered to do his own audits or install video surveillance.
- adrusi 11y ago
  Affordable, efficient, reliable and effective video surveillance tech hasn't really been around for very long, and argiculture isn't exactly silicon valley, the people in charge aren't always very enthusiastic about embracing new technologies. I find it quite easy to believe that an owner of a dairy business might do periodic in-person audits of employees and feel that that's sufficient. Additionally, Idaho is known for its libertarian attitudes, and around-the-clock video surveillance of the entire premises is quite at odds with those ideals. I don't find it hard to imagine that an agricultural operation with video surveillance is meaningfully less attractive to employees. And finally, how bad are the attrocities in these videos relative to the conditions that animals are normally kept in? They can get pretty bad, but I don't think there's an order of magnitude of difference. How much worse is it to be beaten when you already live your life in a cage sitting in your own filth? If you are utterly disgusted by the abuse revealed in these videos, can you really justify modern livestock farming at all? Either you accept that we should treat animals as objects, as we are evolutionarily prepared to do, or you can argue that because we now have the infrastructure available to us to treat animals with respect, we have the responsibility to do so. You can choose a position somewhere along that spectrum, but if you draw the line between imprisoning animals in unliveable conditions so unhealthy that they are fed antibiotics to prevent the spread of disease, and beating them, then I'd argue that the level of precision of your position on the animal rights spectrum is irrationally high, and that it cannot be based in logic.
Brushfire 11y ago
The single best way for these farmers, any farmers, to refute any / all concerns like this is to set up publicly-viewable, always on video feeds of their entire farm operations. Problem solved; assuming there isnt actually bad behavior. This is not expensive.
- adrusi 11y ago
  Consider the documentaries about the livestock industry that present these operations as they are supposed to operate, and the disgust that they evoke in viewers. Now consider if that footage was much more available. I see two possible outcomes. Either people see that and realise where their meat is coming from, and elect to eat less/no meat, or people become desensitized to the conditions, and the leaked PETA-style footage becomes less apalling. The former possibility makes this idea unrealistic in practice, and the latter doesn't seem very good either.
alexivanovs 11y ago
Screw you man. You have zero idea on what you're actually talking about. As you say; you're full of shit. Lets leave it at that. You think anyone cares for a bunch of people, versus the countless cruel acts done against animals in the conditions that they're being done in?
mcv 11y ago
While the problems you mention are serious, the law doesn't seem to do anything to address them. It just tries to prevent the only good thing that happened here: addressing the actual abuses that happened. Of course if a dairymen are worried about abuses coming to light and hurting their reputation, the right response would be for them to prevent those abuses in the first place, to bring them to light themselves, and to report employees who violate the rules. Nobody has access to the facility like the owner. If an undercover investigator can do it, then so can the dairyman. Claiming to care about the animals doesn't mean much when the animals you claim to care about are being mistreated. Plenty of people who work with animals mistreat them, and that's something that needs to stop.
davidgerard 11y ago
You do know the judge in this case grew up on a dairy farm, right. http://blogs.idahostatesman.com/otters-blast-at-judge-winmill-hes-not-one-of-us/ http://blogs.idahostatesman.com/otters-blast-at-judge-winmil...
celticninja 11y ago
Video monitoring works both ways, if you have it in place then you can use it to support your claims of no abuse ocurring, it can also assist in ensuring employees guilty of abuse can be caught and fired. It is like wanting the police to wear body cameras, it helps promotoe good behaviour and assists in catching bad behaviour. This was a crappy law i agree, however it really was not doen to support small farmers (and you pretty much agree that they didnt like the law). There are already laws to deal with death threats, as for the reputation the farmers can monitor their own premises and use this to refute any BS claims.

astrocat 11y ago

Can someone elucidate why existing defamation laws don't cover this already?

tedunangst 11y ago
Does the filmmaker have enough money to cover the farmer's losses? And does the farmer have enough money to hold out until they get paid?
- netfire 11y ago
  So, are you suggesting we should eliminate or limit 1st amendment rights in cases where the parties involved in defamation wouldn't have the money to cover the defamed's losses? If the film is popular (and therefore does more damage), the filmmaker will probably have the means to adequately compensate the farmer. If it isn't popular, it probably won't do much damage to the farmer. Limiting free speech isn't a good solution.
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    I withdraw my suggestion.
cwbrandsma 11y ago
You can only sue for defamation if know who the culprit is. On the internet it is relatively easy to remain anonymous. Case in point: the dairy abuse video that was shot (let agree, it was bad). I've seen it rework and targeted at a milk creamery in Oregon (all via YouTube and Facebook). The video state that this was how the Oregon creamery treated its cows. Couple problems: the dairy wasn't in Oregon, it was in Idaho. The dairy in Idaho doesn't sell to the creamery in Oregon. And the creamery in Oregon DOESN'T OWN ANY COWS. They contract their milk from dairymen in Oregon.
- prawn 11y ago
  Wouldn't surprise me if someone making videos and submitting to YouTube slipped up and identifying info was available. Did the dairy in question pursue this case or assume it was too hard to identify someone?

rosser 11y ago

Just like with police abuses, the fix for the problem is to shine as bright a light as possible on it until it's understood and can be addressed. For many people, at least, a clear understanding that not all cops are bad actors — that, in fact, the bad actors constitute an overwhelming minority of the population. (But also, unfortunately, that the problem in that case is exacerbated by the "thin blue line".) Blocking people from talking about it — you know, "prior restraint" — is emphatically not the solution.

troym 11y ago
> that, in fact, the bad actors constitute an overwhelming minority of the population This survey contradicts that assertion: http://www.aele.org/loscode2000.html http://www.aele.org/loscode2000.html From the survey: `In response to “Please describe the first time you witnessed misconduct by another employee but took no action,” 46 percent (532) advised they had witnessed misconduct by another employee, but concealed what they knew.` If we can trust the survey results, methodology, etc, the minority of which you speak is 46%.
- cafard 11y ago
  One would need to know what the misconduct consisted of, in order to judge what this means. Is the misconduct accepting free coffee at the 7-11, or is it beating a prisoner?
- rosser 11y ago
  I'm specifically making a distinction between the bad actors — people who commit an overtly abusive act — and the "thin blue line", which is cops who are aware of the abuses, but conceal or misrepresent what they've seen. The 46% you cite numbers among the latter. For all you know, though, the people those 46% are talking about having seen committing "misconduct" are the same folks over and over. I'm not downplaying police abuses, and I'm not excusing the people who don't speak up and call it out when it occurs, but I think it remains useful to make a distinction between them.
  - troym 11y ago

azakai 11y ago

I can understand that they are worried about lies being told, but the solution to malicious liars is not to stifle free speech in general. The fact is, sadly, that in any free society freedom of speech will be misused by some people. And the fact remains that in this particular space, we do need people to be able to blow the whistle if something wrong is being done. We know that bad things do happen, and when they do, they can be horrifying. The animals have basically no defense but the conscience of the owner, and, should that fail, a whistleblower.

IndianAstronaut 11y ago

This might sound odd, but I don't think death threats are actually that serious. This is actually pretty routine if you post any remotely controversial video on Youtube or make any statements against any group. People seem to use these random threats to bolster their cause or use it to their advantage.

thaumasiotes 11y ago
Law and politics don't handle cultural change well. Politics could but doesn't; the law can't really -- the whole point of the law is stability.

marricks 11y ago

I'm a vegan (ergo completely opposed to your industry), but I get where you're coming from. It's your livelihood, and it's probably been your family's lively hood. Here's the thing though, the vast majority of where the US gets it's milk from is less of a farm nowadays and more of a factory, that's why milk production efficiency has shot up in the past 100 years --because we started treated these animals more and more like objects using practices such as "rape racks" to keep cows constantly pregnant and producing peak amounts of milk. We also bred them to produce so much milk their bodies are basically spent after 4 years (20% of their natural life span), and we kill them. We could quibble over minor differences in the numbers and terms but that's not my point, I'm pretty sure you can agree those are common practices on farms where the majority of US citizens get their milk. Capitalism has gotten right up in this farming eked every ounce of efficiency out of these animals so there's no space for any compassion. There's so much broken there, and I don't want you and your friends jobless, I want you on better jobs not based on exploiting poor animals. Hell, we give billions of dollars in subsidies to dairy farmers, that money should be spent helping transition. That's just my take, I'm sure you get exposed to a lot of the vocal minority vegans, the vegans I know don't hate the people, just the system.

cwbrandsma 11y ago
Couple good points in your comment, some not so good. But trust me, I appreciate your comments. On milk factories and breeding, yes. That is part of the current game. But I would argue that selective breeding has been done for centuries, we've just gotten better at it. Capitalism has basically forced dairymen to become more efficient -- which is good and bad. My grandfather's cows gave 40-50 lbs of milk per day, my father's cows give 80 (some up to 120). There are consequences when that happens. How you get there is better breeding and better feed (feed has a lot to do with it). On cow longevity, the lifespan of a dairy cow is actually a little longer than that, but the actual longevity it depends on the breed. Holsteins go for about 6 years (lets not kids ourselves, that is not a huge jump in longevity compared to your stated 4). As a comparison, the typical beef cow lives about 2 years. I would talk about veal....but even I don't eat veal. After 6 years the animal is "beefed", as kids we would called it "sold to McDonald's". My next door neighbor was a butcher, basically the only parts unused in a cow are the tail and the moo. Almost nothing goes to waist. Never heard of a "rape rack", I had to look it up. I know a lot of AI breeders as well, that isn't how it is done on the dairies I've seen. From what I've seen it is not necessary, it is pretty easy to get the job done. But, lets talk female cows...ok, lets bring in biology here, female herbivores of almost any herd species (cows, buffalo, goats, sheep, etc) don't have many periods if there are functioning males around. If those animals are ovulating, the males notice -- even the females notice and tell the males about them. On subsidies: most subsidies are "floors". No one gets money from the government unless the price of their product drops consistently below a set point. This happened for a brief period in 2009, and even then a lot of operations went out of business (which is by design actually). This isn't like farmers being paid to not farm (that happens -- ugg). But you also can't say the government is completely out of it either, because the government does buy a lot of milk product, usually powdered milk protein, which is often sent as aid to other countries. Finally, I don't know if I would say a that everything is broken, but lets agree that things could be better. Somewhere between the ideals and where we are now is probably a workable solution that is good for the cows and keeps people's livelihoods.

JulianMorrison 11y ago

A public broadcasting webcam or three might go a long way towards making it clear what's real and what's fantasy. For example, it would be simple to say "go to webcam.myfarm.com and you will see that the images in that movie don't even depict my farm."

geofft 11y ago

There are some echoes here, I think, of Sarah Jeong's thesis in The Internet of Garbage about how copyright laws aren't anti-harassment or privacy laws, how they make terrible anti-harassment or privacy laws, and how victims feel like they're the only option, which is just bad for everyone. Your friends need better support from society. Some of that support may be from the laws (against death threats, slander, etc.). Some of that support needs to come from outside the laws, in the form of more speech countering the incorrect speech, as well as in the form of norms on civilized behavior. Some of that needs to come from a greater willingness to talk about where the food we eat comes from, how it doesn't just show up magically on grocery store shelves. But bad laws won't help them in the long run, nor will they help society.

deciplex 11y ago

I'm from eastern WA myself and I know what you mean, but seriously: > The dairymen in the state aren't worried about filming, they are worried about lies coming from it. Libel laws already exist. We don't ban people from speaking because they might say something they could be held civilly liable for. I know suing people for libel is a pain in the ass (and apparently in Idaho it's much easier to just have your state legislature pass a law), but that's the price you pay to live in a free society.

cma 11y ago

> the film has been redubbed constantly to attack other operations -- even tho they weren't filmed. But.. filming the others was made illegal.

emcrazyone 11y ago

"he has +300 employees, you can't personally monitor everyone all of the time" This is complete and utter bullshit. The whole animal cruelty issue has been in the news for years and to say you did nothing to investigate your own operations or do anything to monitor the activity is negligence. I saw the video too! I have a friend in the Dairy business with around 150 employees. His entire operation is video monitored around the clock. I just don't buy arguments like this. I see them as excuses. Your friend may be a good person and all but not doing more to prevent the bad apples is just no excuse in my book. The sad thing is people need to be kept in check. For if the video never came out, this dairyman would probably have continue business as usual since he never bothered to do his own audits or install video surveillance.

adrusi 11y ago
Affordable, efficient, reliable and effective video surveillance tech hasn't really been around for very long, and argiculture isn't exactly silicon valley, the people in charge aren't always very enthusiastic about embracing new technologies. I find it quite easy to believe that an owner of a dairy business might do periodic in-person audits of employees and feel that that's sufficient. Additionally, Idaho is known for its libertarian attitudes, and around-the-clock video surveillance of the entire premises is quite at odds with those ideals. I don't find it hard to imagine that an agricultural operation with video surveillance is meaningfully less attractive to employees. And finally, how bad are the attrocities in these videos relative to the conditions that animals are normally kept in? They can get pretty bad, but I don't think there's an order of magnitude of difference. How much worse is it to be beaten when you already live your life in a cage sitting in your own filth? If you are utterly disgusted by the abuse revealed in these videos, can you really justify modern livestock farming at all? Either you accept that we should treat animals as objects, as we are evolutionarily prepared to do, or you can argue that because we now have the infrastructure available to us to treat animals with respect, we have the responsibility to do so. You can choose a position somewhere along that spectrum, but if you draw the line between imprisoning animals in unliveable conditions so unhealthy that they are fed antibiotics to prevent the spread of disease, and beating them, then I'd argue that the level of precision of your position on the animal rights spectrum is irrationally high, and that it cannot be based in logic.

Brushfire 11y ago

The single best way for these farmers, any farmers, to refute any / all concerns like this is to set up publicly-viewable, always on video feeds of their entire farm operations. Problem solved; assuming there isnt actually bad behavior. This is not expensive.

adrusi 11y ago
Consider the documentaries about the livestock industry that present these operations as they are supposed to operate, and the disgust that they evoke in viewers. Now consider if that footage was much more available. I see two possible outcomes. Either people see that and realise where their meat is coming from, and elect to eat less/no meat, or people become desensitized to the conditions, and the leaked PETA-style footage becomes less apalling. The former possibility makes this idea unrealistic in practice, and the latter doesn't seem very good either.

alexivanovs 11y ago

Screw you man. You have zero idea on what you're actually talking about. As you say; you're full of shit. Lets leave it at that. You think anyone cares for a bunch of people, versus the countless cruel acts done against animals in the conditions that they're being done in?

mcv 11y ago

While the problems you mention are serious, the law doesn't seem to do anything to address them. It just tries to prevent the only good thing that happened here: addressing the actual abuses that happened. Of course if a dairymen are worried about abuses coming to light and hurting their reputation, the right response would be for them to prevent those abuses in the first place, to bring them to light themselves, and to report employees who violate the rules. Nobody has access to the facility like the owner. If an undercover investigator can do it, then so can the dairyman. Claiming to care about the animals doesn't mean much when the animals you claim to care about are being mistreated. Plenty of people who work with animals mistreat them, and that's something that needs to stop.

davidgerard 11y ago

You do know the judge in this case grew up on a dairy farm, right. http://blogs.idahostatesman.com/otters-blast-at-judge-winmill-hes-not-one-of-us/ http://blogs.idahostatesman.com/otters-blast-at-judge-winmil...

celticninja 11y ago

Video monitoring works both ways, if you have it in place then you can use it to support your claims of no abuse ocurring, it can also assist in ensuring employees guilty of abuse can be caught and fired. It is like wanting the police to wear body cameras, it helps promotoe good behaviour and assists in catching bad behaviour. This was a crappy law i agree, however it really was not doen to support small farmers (and you pretty much agree that they didnt like the law). There are already laws to deal with death threats, as for the reputation the farmers can monitor their own premises and use this to refute any BS claims.