Ag-Gag Laws: The Bid to Silence Animal Advocates – a powerful presentation for animal rights advocacy

David Ritter and Will Potter, “Ag-Gag Laws: The Bid to Silence Animal Advocates”, Voiceless 2014 Animal Law Lecture Series, Corrs Westgarth offices, Sydney, 2 May 2014

I had the opportunity and privilege to attend this very powerful seminar given by Voiceless, an animal rights and advocacy organisation, and its guest speakers David Ritter of Greenpeace Australia and Will Potter, an American investigative journalist, in the Sydney offices of the law firm Corrs Westgarth. The theme of the talks given focused on the rise of ag-gag legislation which is designed deliberately to target and silence animal rights advocates and reporters, preventing them from documenting and reporting on the suffering of animals in factory farms and abattoirs.

After introductions in which the audience learned about the work done by Voiceless since its inception in 2004 on animal rights, principally in the areas of the rights of animals living in battery conditions on farms and of the commercial hunting of kangaroos, the talks by the guest speakers began in earnest. David Ritter concentrated on the issue of dredging for coal in one part of the Great Barrier Reef off the Queensland coast in the main. His speech also included a summary of marketing campaigns undertaken by animal rights activists in the past and the effectiveness of these campaigns. Not many visual aids were used but those that were – a brief film of an ad campaign linking a corporation’s palm oil product with the deforestation of rainforests in Indonesia and the effects on the orang utang populations was included – proved to be very moving indeed.

Despite his jet lag which affected his voice, Will Potter proved to be a passionate and determined speaker, and a highly entertaining one into the bargain, holding most people if not everyone spellbound with his and other people’s experiences as animal rights and protection advocates and their brushes with the law. He spoke at length on the recent history of animal rights protest and advocacy and moves within the US government to curb such activity at the behest of lobby groups acting for agribusiness. The experiences of two activists he personally knew were quite horrific, with one of his friends re-arrested, thrown back into jail and even threatened with solitary confinement for speaking about his time in the slammer. Potter also spoke of how various acts pertaining to animal protection have been amended over the years until the language and particular definitions have been changed to mean something very different, even diametrically opposed, to what their original intention and meaning were.

Especially insidious was Potter’s mention of how terrorism and the meaning of the word “terrorist” have been re-defined to include environmental and animal rights and protection activists and campaigners. This is one example of many of how the US government uses fear and the language of fear and defensiveness to divide Americans against one another and control the public’s thinking and behaviour. The manipulation of public opinion through the news media and advertising campaigns is apparent. At the same time the manipulation can be jaw-droppingly arrogant and crude, with ad hominem attacks, false associations and cut-and-pasted language copied from past campaigns to denigrate activists.

The time passed very quickly and the presentations finished ten minutes later than originally scheduled but an informative 90-minute session was had by all.

 

 

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