Tell Legislators to Honor Free Speech in Florida!

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SB 1246 would make it a first-degree felony to photograph a farm without first obtaining written permission from the owner. Farmers say the bill is needed “to protect the property rights of farmers and the ‘intellectual property’ involving farm operations.” But it’s clear the only reason is to keep the public from seeing the shocking conditions that exist on factory farms.

Tell your legislator that photographing CAFOs is protected speech under the First Amendment, and if farmers don’t want their dirty laundry aired, they should simply make their farms sanitary and treat their animals humanely.

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SB 1246

Dear [Decision Maker],

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As your constituent, I am writing to voice my strongest objection to SB 1246, which "prohibits a person from entering onto a farm and making any audio record, photograph, or video record at the farm without the owner's written consent."

Your Agriculture Committee, in its analysis of the bills, said it quite plainly: "Certain animal rights groups attempt to expose what they consider to be animal abuse on America's farms and processing facilities by...taking hidden camera footage of those facilities. This footage is compiled and uploaded to their various websites and used for documentary films which are adversarial to the animal farming business."

If the factory farming industry does not want its grossly unsanitary facilities and its treatment of animals (whether one wishes to characterize it as "abuse" or not) to be exposed to the light of day, wouldn't it make more sense to clean up the factory farms themselves, rather than trampling the rights of free speech and freedom of the press? Aren't whistleblowers to be applauded? Why should the state of Florida protect an industry whose practices are questionable at best, at the expense of a possible violation of the US Constitution?

Your analyst even flagged this as a possible concern: "There may be potential First Amendment issues with the bill as written because the bill does not require that the offender actually be on private property to be guilty of photographing, etc., without the written consent of the owner."

This is a bad bill, and supporting it will only endanger the health and well-being of your citizens who consume the food made from the animals kept in such an environment--not to mention propagating the potential abuse of animals. Why should companion pets enjoy the protection of animal abuse laws, but food animals be subjected to the most inhumane conditions imaginable?

Protect free speech in Florida. Please vote against SB 1246.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[City, State ZIP]

Protecting Natural Health