www.GreenIsTheNewRed.com<\/a> for more information. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Utah state House may soon consider a law that would make it a crime to take a picture of a farm, while on the property, without consent from the farmer. The legislation is aimed at animal right activists who covertly film and photograph animals that live in conditions the activists find objectionable, and who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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The Utah state House may soon consider a law that would make it a crime to take a picture of a farm, while on the property, without consent from the farmer. The legislation is aimed at animal right activists who covertly film and photograph animals that live in conditions the activists find objectionable, and who make these images available to the public as part of policy campaigns. Hidden camera footage of situations like cows being dragged to slaughter and chickens packed into cages so tightly they cannot sit down have become a common educational tool of animal rights groups. Even mainstream news channels use the shocking footage when covering debates around animal cruelty and farming practices. A spokesman for PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, told the Utah Desert News that criminalizing undercover photography and filming would prevent vital information from reaching the public. A backer of the Utah bill, State Representative John Mathis, believes farmers need protection from the activists he labels \u201canimal rights terrorists.\u201d Mathis drafted the legislation, HB187 to criminalize videos and photos taken without a farmer\u2019s permission as \u201cagricultural operation interference.\u201d A first offense would bring a misdemeanor charge, and the second would become a third-degree felony, which journalist and author Will Potter says puts it on par with assaulting a police officer. Will Potter is the author of Green is the New Red: An Insider\u2019s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege, in which he chronicles the ways in which environmental activists and others are increasingly being branded as domestic terrorists. We had interviewed Will when his book first came out and he now joins us once more. Welcome back to Uprising. <\/p>\n