Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
A proposed bill that would criminalize filming on lowa livestock and crop agricultural sites was discussed by CNN analysts who deemed the measure “likely unconstitutional” and not in the public’s best interest.
The Iowa proposal, which passed the House mid-March and has since been placed on the Iowa Senate’s unfinished business calendar, seeks to carve out special legal penalties for those who embark on the creation or distribution of undercover videos or audio on agricultural sites. Similar legislation is being considered in Minnesota and Florida.
Iowa Sen. Matt McCoy, a Des Moines Democrat, noted last week that the bill is backed by numerous agricultural interests and raises constitutional concerns. The end result of such a measure, he said, could be heightened animal abuse, limits of employee rights and increased food safety concerns.
Advocates of the bill, however, indicate the measure is needed to protect the state’s ag interests from those “who seek to end all livestock production in the U.S.,” and those who would fraudulently obtain employment to create “heavily edited” videos depicting scenes of abuse.
If the objective of the bill is to protect livestock producers, it remains unclear why legislators chose to include new and unprecedented protections for crop producers in the bill. Further, many of the crimes noted in the proposed legislation appear to be circumstances that would already be covered by existing enforcement of fraud, trespass and other statutes.
“They’re all very interested in this bill because they’ve all seen these undercover videos and they don’t want that happening to their industry, so they want to stop this from happening,” McCoy told KCRG-TV. “The whole bill is fraught with problems. They’re having a hard time drafting a constitutional amendment. We’re saying there’s a point where you can’t take a bad piece of legislation and make it work.”
The bill sets a special precedent for one industry, McCoy said, that could be co-opted by another industry. To prove his point, McCoy offered an amendment that would make it illegal to secretly videotape at “pregnancy termination locations,” such as Planned Parenthood facilities that offer abortion services.
Video of the CNN discussion is embedded below:
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