FL: Fight Ag-Gag Bills! Protect Farm Animals and Cruelty Investigators
Florida's Animals Need Your Voice
Dear Florida Animal Advocates,
We need your help to stop the progress of two bills being considered by your state legislature in Tallahassee. Florida Senate Bill 1184 and House Bill 1021 would criminalize the efforts of whistleblowers to expose mistreatment of animals. This
“ag-gag” legislation is a blatant attempt by factory farms and puppy mills to keep their dark activities under wraps and away from public awareness.
Specifically, these bills would make it a crime to simply take a picture on a farm without the property owner’s written consent. Concerned citizens, employees, neighbors, and anyone else who sees a suffering animal and wants to document it would be criminals and face imprisonment—and alarmingly, this would be equally true for anyone who uses photography or video to document child abuse, drug use, assault, theft, the employment of undocumented workers and other illegal activity on a farm.
Rather than stop cruel treatment of animals, these bills will simply ensure that the public never learns about it. Rather than sending perpetrators of animal cruelty to jail, Florida agribusiness wants to send those who expose the cruelty to jail.
We must not let these bills become law.