What Are Ag-Gag Laws and How Many States Have Them?

Because of these laws, pulling back the curtain on industrial agriculture is difficult—but not impossible. Ever since Upton Sinclair’s landmark 1906 book The Jungle, undercover investigations have been a driving force behind the passage of laws designed to protect animals, workers, and public health in our food system. Sinclair’s work, which exposed unsafe and filthy conditions throughout the meatpacking district of Chicago, shocked the American public and laid the foundation for the federal Meat Inspection Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and ultimately the entire Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Whistleblowing exposés are a powerful form of forced transparency, driving change by inspiring a scandalized public to demand better. After all, shouldn’t we be able to see how our food gets made? Proponents of ag-gag legislation would say no—instead electing to silence whistleblowers, ensuring groundbreaking exposés like Sinclair’s are never shared with the public.

These “ag-gag” laws, which are designed to “gag” whistleblowers and activists trying to document the conditions inside factory farms, present a serious threat to transparency and accountability in our food system—and to the health, safety, and humane treatment of people and animals in the United States.

What is an ag-gag law?

Ag-gag laws, also known as “farm security” laws, punish people for recording or exposing the abuses happening within concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). As the name suggests, the laws “gag” anyone trying to gather or share footage documenting animal abuse—making sure the public never sees exactly how much cruelty goes into the food that shows up on our supermarket shelves.

Ag-gag laws can take different or hybrid forms, but they generally include one or more of the following elements:

• Some ban you from recording photo or video footage inside a factory farm without explicit consent from the owner. These are known as “agricultural interference” laws.
• Other “agricultural fraud” laws prevent you from entering a factory farm or applying for a job in order to document what’s happening inside the facility.
• And some, known as “quick-reporting” or “rapid-reporting” legislation, require that you turn over any footage documenting animal abuse to authorities within a short timeframe, like 24 hours. While this might sound like a good thing, it ends up preventing whistleblowers from accumulating enough evidence to establish a systemic pattern of abuse—since any single video can be passed off as one suffering animal, one inhumane cage, or one isolated act of worker cruelty.

Imagine this: You’re a factory farm worker appalled by the routine abuses you see in your workplace every single day—chickens drowning in boiling water, piglets castrated without painkillers, or even dangerous fecal contamination of the meat being produced. You use your smartphone to film these violations, hoping to protect animals and the public by holding your employer to account. But thanks to ag-gag laws, your employer isn’t the criminal in this situation—you are.

Whistleblowers aren’t always employees. They may be investigative journalists, activists, authors, or scholars conducting essential research. When implemented on a large scale, ag-gag laws prevent investigators from doing important work to reform our food system, contributing to a culture of secrecy and censorship that carries all the way from factory farms to our plates.

Are ag-gag laws constitutional?

You might be wondering… how did these laws get passed in the first place? After all, free speech is protected by the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” And our legal system would agree with you. Ag-gag laws have already been struck down (either partially or in full) in six states, with lawsuits ongoing in three more.

If a law restricts protected speech—and most types of speech are considered ‘protected,’ with a few exclusions such as threats, obscenity, and speech designed to incite violence—the court determines what level of scrutiny applies to the law in question. The law might be subject to strict scrutiny, meaning it must be “narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest.” Otherwise it’s subject to intermediate scrutiny, meaning it still needs to advance an “important government interest by means that are substantially related to that interest.” Basically, there had better be a really good reason for the law to exist, and the law had better be carefully designed to serve its purpose.

In most cases, the courts have agreed that ag-gag laws fail to hold up to strict scrutiny. For example, a state could have a compelling interest to protect private property against trespassing—but this could be accomplished much more easily, and directly, through a simple anti-trespassing law.

So the question still remains. How have ag-gag laws successfully been passed in multiple states? To put it simply, these laws are the fruits of lobbying efforts by an industry that could not survive, let alone remain profitable, if its practices were revealed to its customers.

Who passed ag-gag laws?

In the 1990s, underground investigations by animal rights groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Animal Liberation Front began permeating the public consciousness. As videos taken by undercover activists were broadcast throughout the mainstream media, many consumers looked into a slaughterhouse for the first time—glimpsing the brutal slaughter methods, castration and tail-docking, worker cruelty, and other atrocities happening behind the scenes. Predictably, as soon as the public started to see what was going on inside slaughterhouses and feedlots, the agriculture industry stepped in.

Using their considerable financial power and political clout, slaughterhouses began lobbying their states to criminalize whistleblowers, resulting in the first ag-gag law being enacted in Kansas in 1990. While these first few ag-gag laws didn’t get much attention, they laid the groundwork for future legislation, giving credence to the idea that factory farms deserved government protection.

Since that first law, ag-gag legislation has swept through ten more states, with a second wave of laws enacted starting in 2011. The more people have seen what is happening behind closed doors, the more the industry has worked to cover it up. The push for this extreme secrecy only goes to prove that the stakes are higher than we can imagine—for the 1.6 billion animals suffering on factory farms, for the health of our loved ones, and for the future of our planet.

How many states have ag-gag laws?

While many states have tried to pass ag-gag laws, animal advocates have brought nine lawsuits challenging them across the country. Ag-gag laws have been fully or partially struck down in Iowa, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho, with lawsuits ongoing in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Iowa. A federal judge just struck down yet another Iowa law in March of this year.

As the courts continue to reinforce that these laws aren’t acceptable, the animal agriculture industry is losing its grip. But unfortunately, ag-gag laws remain in effect today in six states:

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• Iowa
• Missouri
• Montana
• North Dakota

What are the potential problems with ag-gag laws?

While the Animal Welfare Act has improved the lives of some animals, farm animals are exempt from it, and state animal cruelty laws provide numerous loopholes for how farm animals can be treated. For example, many state laws exempt cruelty that falls within the category of “common,” “normal,” or “routine” animal husbandry practices. But here’s the catch. The more that factory farms normalize cruelty, the more “normal” that cruelty becomes… in the industry, and in the eyes of the law. Just a few of the brutal practices now considered “normal” in the industry are live-shackle slaughter, sows confined to gestation crates so small they can’t turn around, traumatizing castration that leaves piglets trembling for days, and many, many more.

This means that undercover investigations are some of the only tools we have to expose the abuse happening within these facilities. “Videotaping at factory farms wouldn’t be necessary if the industry were properly regulated,” Mark Bittman, who popularized the term ‘ag-gag’ in a 2011 New York Times opinion piece, points out. “But it isn’t.”

Ag-gag laws only serve to ensure that producers can continue to profit from animal cruelty, employee mistreatment, and environmental degradation. Here are just a few of the areas where ag-gag laws pose a problem.

Animal welfare

Probably the most obvious impact of ag-gag laws is that they keep the public unaware of the horrifying animal cruelty inherent in day-to-day routines on a factory farm. This undercover investigation by Mercy for Animals revealed sickening abuse by one of the nation’s largest pork producers, Iowa Select Farms—including mother pigs confined to metal crates so small they were unable to comfortably lie down for their entire lives, pigs suffering from agonizing open wounds and pressure sores, and workers ripping out the testicles of conscious piglets without painkillers. And that’s just one investigation. It’s important to remember that these aren't one-time acts of cruelty; this is a systemic culture of abuse.

Food safety

In 2008, a separate undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States revealed a number of “downed” cows—cows so sick they were unable to stand—at the Hallmark slaughterhouse in Chino, California, where the animals were being dragged or pushed to the kill floor. Not only was the video heartbreaking to watch, but meat from downed cattle also poses a dangerous risk to human health, with a higher chance of being contaminated with mad cow disease, E. coli, or salmonella. An estimated 37 million pounds of the beef had already gone directly into the National School Lunch Program. Public outcry resulted in the largest meat recall in US history.

Workers’ rights

The meat industry has a long and disturbing history of subjecting its employees to harmful conditions in the pursuit of higher profits. Workers on factory farms are regularly exposed to hazardous substances, spending their days breathing ammonia and hydrogen sulfide gas, and have been some of the most vulnerable to illness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only is the work physically harmful; it also takes a psychological toll on mental health and wellbeing. Unfortunately, while factory farm employees are in dire need of workplace reform, they are often unable to advocate for a safer environment—as they frequently come from marginalized communities, lack documentation, and/or don’t have enough financial security to feel comfortable raising their concerns.

Environmental protection

While factory farms are some of the worst contributors to environmental devastation, ironically, they are widely exempt from environmental protection regulations. CAFOs pollute our air and water, contribute to deforestation, and add significantly to the global output of greenhouse gas emissions. Rather than taking responsibility for these failures, the industry can lean on ag-gag laws to make sure they aren’t shared with the public.

Free speech

Perhaps most concerning of all, ag-gag laws present an alarming threat to free speech and transparency that has far-reaching implications beyond the animal agriculture industry. In some states, the laws are so broad that they criminalize whistleblowing in other businesses as well, including hospitals, schools, and veteran care facilities—obscuring the abuses that may be happening in these spaces, too.

Who opposes anti-whistleblower bills?

Because these laws are so sweeping, they have been met with opposition by many groups beyond the animal advocacy community. Animal advocates have joined forces with organizations focused on civil liberties, free press, food safety, and worker rights to successfully campaign against ag-gag laws. Some of these groups have included the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International USA, Food and Water Watch, International Labor Rights Forum, United Farm Workers, and more.

How can ag-gag laws be stopped?

To demonstrate your opposition to ag-gag laws, use your voice as a consumer to advocate for more transparency. Help share undercover investigations the industry wants to keep quiet. Support groups like the Animal Legal Defense Fund, who are working to oppose anti-whistleblower bills. And consider reducing your consumption of animal products to stop supporting the factory farming industry altogether.

While ag-gag laws help industrial agriculture keep its abuses a secret, efforts to access information about its practices are ongoing—and in some cases successful. After the USDA settled a lawsuit related to the Freedom of Information Act, it began to publicly disclose records of slaughterhouse inspections for the first time ever, including documentation of egregious abuses captured by inspectors in their own words.

Conclusion

Horrifying abuses are happening to animals behind the scenes, and ag-gag laws are not a solution. Food system reform is. We desperately need laws and regulations designed to protect animals on farms, feedlots, and slaughterhouses—not laws designed to hide the abuse altogether.

The US agriculture industry would rather animals keep suffering behind closed doors, ensuring it isn’t held accountable for unspeakable cruelty on an enormous scale. __Let’s make sure its abuses can be shared for everyone to see. __