Recently Idaho became the seventh state in the US to pass an ag-gag law. The bill, approved by the state legislature and signed into law by Governor C.L. Otter with a rarely seen lightning speed, makes it illegal to record video or investigate inside farms for the purpose of exposing animal cruelty. The new law comes in the wake of a disturbing film shot and released by the non-profit Mercy for Animals following an uncover investigation it conducted at a large Idaho dairy farm. The penalties for violating the new law are stricter than the penalties for the illegal acts of animal cruelty that animal rights activists and undercover investigators hope to expose. According to Mercy for Animals, which sends agents to secure evidence of animal cruelty, nearly every investigation at factory farm sites reveals some form of animal cruelty or illegal animal abuse. Idaho’s new ag-gag law criminalizes such investigations in the state. One might be led to believe that Mercy for Animals, which dedicates private resources to exposing illegal activity in the factory farm industry, would be celebrated and thanked for its efforts by state governments. Yet this belief fails to take into account the bourgeois nature of the state, which is ultimately a mediator for divergent bourgeois interests and an expression of their collective rule. Though Mercy for Animals may draw resources from an affluent minority which desires some moral assuagement, it itself is not an industry or ruling class in places like Idaho. The rapidity at which the state government moved to initiate the industry-backed ag-gag law displays in open fashion the nature of the bourgeois state: to maintain and advance the interests of an economic ruling-class.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 06:25:18 +0000
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