Will Potter, a journalist who focuses on issues related to animal rights and civil liberties, recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to to raise money to finance a drone investigation of the country’s notoriously shady factory farms. “In my new project, I am going to use new investigative journalism tools to help expose what some corporations want to keep hidden. With your support, I will lawfully document factory farms in multiple states using aerial drone photography,” Potter explains on his fundraising page. He met his $30,000 goal in just five days.
Potter’s project is in direct response to so-called “ag gag” laws, which prevent activists from exposing inhumane practices within the agricultural industry. This type of legislation, which is pushed by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), has steadily spread across the country over the past several years. Idaho was the latest state to enact an ag-gag law, and that measure is currently being challenged by several groups who say it will ultimately undermine animal and food safety.
Undercover investigations have a proven history of leading to change within the industry. In 2008, a Humane Society video documented a California slaughterhouse abusing and killing sick cattle, which led to the largest beef recall in U.S. history and the largest penalty ever awarded for an animal abuse case