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Ag-gag laws Excerpt from a longer SourceWatch article on Ag-gag laws:

Ag-gag laws are laws intended to prevent whistleblowers from exposing animal cruelty on farms. Reporters have noted that some of these laws could also be used to criminalize anti-fracking activists, or those who protest the drilling of shale oil and gas using the radical and polluting hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" technique. The term "ag gag" for the laws was coined by Mark Bittman in an April 2011 New York Times column. Bills to ban photographing or videotaping farms without the farmers' consent were proposed or are active in Indiana and New Hampshire in 2014. Similar bills were proposed or passed in Iowa (passed), Florida (defeated), New York (died), and Minnesota (died) in 2011; in Indiana (died), Utah (passed), South Carolina (passed), Nebraska (died), Illinois (defeated), and Missouri (passed, modified) in 2012; and in Arkansas (passed), Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire (died for 2013, rolled over to 2014), New Mexico (died), Tennessee (passed, vetoed), Wyoming, California, Vermont, and North Carolina in early 2013 (prompting Grist to ask if 2013 will be the "year of ag-gag bills" ). Three similar laws, more broad in scope rather than limited primarily to recording, were passed in Kansas, Montana and North Dakota in 1990 and 1991.

Indiana (2014)
Indiana's 2013 ag gag bill died in conference committee (see below). However, on January 7, 2014, Senator Travis Holdman (R-19) -- who authored ag gag bills in both 2012 and 2013 -- authored SB 101 on "agricultural operations and criminal trespass," and it was referred to the Senate Committee on Corrections and Criminal Law, which included the bill in its January 7 and January 14 agendas. ''Muncie Voice" reported it to include "even more harmful language to prosecute environmental and animal rights watchdogs who expose dangerous and unethical practices at factory farms. . . . It allows owners of industrial livestock operations to post signs on their property that list whatever the owner determines are criminal activities – 'crimes' which could include videotaping, photography, or reporting observations of abuse to law enforcement officials or the press. Violators of these operator-defined 'crimes' will be considered to have committed a level 6 felony." Groups opposing the bill include the Hoosier Chapter Sierra Club, Hoosier Environmental Council, Hoosier State Press Association, Indiana Broadcasters Association, Indiana CAFO Watch, Indiana Farmers’ Union, National Press Photographers Association, National Young Farmers Coalition, Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and The Humane Society of the Unites States.

Read the entire SourceWatch page Ag-gag laws here.