A Utah Woman Is Being Prosecuted for Filming a Slaughterhouse from a Public Street

The United States' first prosecution under so-called ag-gag legislation has begun. Will Potter reports at Green Is The New Red that a Utah woman, Amy Meyer, has been charged under the state's new law prohibiting filming or photographing an agricultural operation, factory farm, slaughterhouse, or the like without permission.

Critical in all this is that Meyer was standing alongside a public street, documenting something occurring in plain view.

According to what Meyer told Potter, she went by the Dale Smith Meatpacking Company in Draper City, Utah to see what she could see from the road. Upon seeing what she thought was a clearly injured but living cow being carried away in a tractor, she began filming. The slaughterhouse manager saw her, came out and told her stop, to which Meyer replied that she was in the public easement along the road and would not stop. The police were called, who noted that, contrary to assertions by the slaughterhouse employee that Meyer had crossed over the property's fence, there appeared to be no damage to the fence.

Potter does a good job going into the particulars of Utah's ag-gag bill—it was actually sponsored by the mayor of the town and owner of the slaughterhouse she filmed—and its connection to similar bills sprouting up across the country. Check it out if you're not up to speed on this issue.

The thing that really strikes me in this case, and ag-gag bills in general, is how filming something in public view from a public space has been criminalized. It's an egregious, aggressive swipe at journalism, activism, and documentary artists, as well as a further example of the erosion of public rights at the behest of corporate interests.

Read the rest over at the new Motherboard.VICE.com.