“Anyone who takes a drive through the countryside gets a chance to see how farming is done today. It’s not that big a secret.” (Jim Reagen, spokesman for Senator Patty Ritchie, Time, 6/14/11)

Please watch before proceeding.

If the NY Farm Bureau (with help from sympathetic legislators like Senator Ritchie) has its way, undercover videos from PETA (the HSUS, Mercy For Animals, Compassion Over Killing, the Humane Farming Association, Compassionate Consumers, et al.) would be no more. Tucked within a new senate Unlawful Tampering With Farm Animals bill (S5172-2011), lies a prohibition against “…unauthorized video, audio recording or photography done without the farm owner’s written consent.” The bill, having passed committee, still must come before the entire senate and currently lacks an assembly sponsor.

In theory, the MFA investigator who shot this video would face a stiffer penalty (up to one year in jail) than the Willet Dairy employee who beat up a cow (for the record, a $555 fine and no animal contact for a year, at which point he could resume work in his field). NY is the fourth state this year to introduce this type of legislation, but the purported purpose here, as Senator Ritchie tells Time, is “to help insure the safety and integrity of the state’s food supply.” She is mostly talking about illegal antibiotic injections and potential terrorist activity (shady characters lurking with a camera). That, though, is a smokescreen. Big Agribusiness has been hurt by the undercover reporting and aims to stop it.

To be sure, virtually every business has something about their operation they’d rather the public not see. But can’t a reasonable distinction be drawn between flies in a restaurant kitchen (covered by the health department, anyhow) and wrenches to a cow’s head (not covered by the Animal Welfare Act; i.e., the farms are watching themselves)? Senator Ritchie’s political-speak aside, this bill has about as much to do with protecting the food supply (which Reagen admits is not currently a problem) as the Civil War had to do with states’ rights. Livestock processing (including intelligent, sensitive creatures being tortured) in the raw does not make for good business. And part of Ritchie’s job is to protect that business.

Industry claims of tape edits and lack of proper context recall the Rodney King case. Then, police defenders argued that what took place before (and inaudible belligerence during) in some way justified what they did. Roughly, this translates to trust us, not your eyes. With animals, docile and utterly powerless ones at that, what context to the recorded cruelty (both savage physical assaults and painful standard procedures where anesthetics/analgesics could be, but aren’t, used) are we missing? And, not one undercover video from an animal rights group has ever been proven fraudulent.

If, somehow, this bill (or a version thereof) passes, then acts of civil disobedience would never be more warranted. For not every law, as Henry David Thoreau argued, is just and should be obeyed. To these poor, forgotten animals, the activists often represent their only line of defense; without the images (whistelblowing employees would also be barred from using cameras), a war of words ensues. And who usually wins those battles? With cruelty arrests rare (and convictions even rarer), law enforcement needs all available tools to ferret out the abusers (the Cayuga County prosecutor on Willet Dairy told Time that the MFA video “was the case”).

Factory farms claim to have (and enforce) ethical standards (where were they here? or here?), and government supposedly provides safety nets (here? how about here?). But how is it that the only regular government inspections of these farms is by the EPA for environmental purposes? If not for the work of investigators, the animals’ cries would (will) be forever muted; their stories left untold. S5172-2011 stands against knowledge, and for ignorance. Even if not particularly interested in animal matters, please let your legislators know that the only thing the Ag-Gag bill gags is the time-honored tradition of investigative journalism, which is an essential component of any democracy. As the NY Times said in an editorial against, “We need to know more about what goes on behind those closed doors, not less.”