State legislatures in Iowa, Minnesota and Florida are now considering bills that would make it a criminal offense to gain employment for the purposes of videotaping what goes on the behind warehouse walls of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs. In March, the Iowa House of Representatives passed such an anti- “whistle blower” measure, co-written by the Iowa Poultry Association, which is now before the State Senate.

Pre-emptive legal strikes by the CAFO industry to put a chilling effect on anyone considering tarnishing its public image are hardly surprising. Industrial animal food producers are reeling from a series of shocking undercover videos that expose the abuse and suffering on the disassembly lines of slaughterhouses and inside warehouses crammed with hogs, laying hens, and meat birds. Such imagery is hard to shake from your subconscious. (Just this week a video was released of a sick calf getting killed with a pickaxe.) Opinion polls consistently show that Americans are increasingly concerned about animal welfare and health standards, and often willing to pay more for them.

While the industry would like us to believe that what you don’t know can’t hurt you, we are barely six months removed from last summer’s recall of 500 million eggs due to salmonella contamination from just two CAFO operations in Iowa. In response, people flocked to farmers markets, specialty retailers, and other venues to purchase free-range, organic, and cage-free alternatives.

In fact, industrial animal agriculture has already made bold assaults against First Amendment rights. In three states—Kansas, Montana, and North Dakota—it is illegal to photograph a factory farm without permission of the owner. Thirteen states have passed agricultural disparagement laws—a.k.a. veggie libel laws—that restrict what can be said about perishable food products. None of these laws have been challenged in federal court. The Texas Cattlemen’s Association, however, engaged Oprah Winfrey in a prolonged legal battle in the late 1990s for claiming on television that she had been “stopped cold from eating another burger” after learning about cattle feeding procedures from reformed rancher Howard Lyman. The popular talk show host had both sufficient resources and determination to fight and ultimately won the decision.

Numerous states have passed Common Farming Exemptions, which essentially allow the industry to determine animal cruelty statutes by defining them as standard practices. Does this sound like the fox guarding the henhouse? While the welfare of our pets is legally protected, there are no federal laws that presently govern the raising of food animals. Food animals are protected during transport (very hard to enforce) and during slaughter (though this doesn’t include the 9 billion chickens raised in the United States each year.)

The real question citizens and our elected representatives should be asking is, what do the animal factories have to hide, and do we really want to be part of such a clandestine food system? Is a cheap bacon cheeseburger or bucket of chicken worth the loss of democratic freedoms? We are talking about food production, after all, not missile defense.

Dr. Temple Grandin, animal behavior specialist at Colorado State University and long-time consultant to the livestock industry, argues in her most recent book, Animals Make Us Human, for greater transparency. Animal food producing operations, she suggests, should be able to pass a random inspection test, where a non-expert can visit and intuit how well animals are being treated. The best facilities, in her opinion, have video cameras streaming at all times, allowing for constant monitoring. Dr. Grandin is far from a radical animal welfare activist, and remains one of the most respected people in the world on such matters.

Animal agriculture impacts the planet in powerful ways. Tens of billions of food animals consume vast amounts of feed, generate massive volumes of waste, and make cheap fat and cholesterol laden meat, eggs, and dairy products the centerpiece rather than a vital component of every meal.

Proponents have been arguing for years that industrial food production is necessary to feed the word’s ever-increasing population. Essentially we are being told that the CAFO industry is too big to fail. Research increasingly shows that modern sustainable agriculture operations can be equally or more productive than conventional ones: without federal subsidies, environmental impacts, and dubious health implications—or infringements upon constitutionally protected freedom of speech.

Organic and sustainable agriculture practitioners have spent the last thirty years with an open source approach to information about farming techniques. For the most part, what they have learned the hard way about chemical-free, soil enhancing agriculture is out in the open for anyone to learn. Certified organic and biodynamic producers are required to pay fees to third-parties to audit their practices.

Recent moves to pre-empt the public from learning about the sometimes unspeakable conditions of modern intensive livestock operations are just the tip of the iceberg. Local communities are being stripped of their powers to determine zoning and land use concerning agricultural operations. Why aren’t local citizens permitted the right to decide whether a CAFO can be sited in their community in states like Illinois and Iowa?

There is a lot more information that the consuming public might find useful about industrial animal food production: the quantity of antibiotics used during a given production cycle; the exact contents of feed rations; the quantities, content and dates of air and water emissions from a CAFO; the amount of federal subsidies that support a particular operation. All are concerns with real public consequences.

We all have to eat. But we also have a right to know. Food should not come at the expense of animal welfare, the health of someone else’s community, or perhaps most importantly, our democratic freedoms.

The agribusiness sector has been abuzz with complaints about ABC’s recent Nightline exposé of the biggest dairy factory farm in one of the largest dairy production states: New York. The segment features footage compiled by Mercy for Animals showing inhumane treatment of dairy cows, followed by ABC’s interview of the operation’s owner rationalizing that he doesn’t know if it hurts the animals, because as he put it, “I can’t speak for the cow.”

Agribusiness spokespeople predictably dismissed the story as a “propaganda piece” and “lacking…factual information.”

Reading industry responses to these kinds of investigations is always interesting to me. Whether it’s exposés of pig factory farms, egg factory farms, or now this dairy investigation, some ag producers seem to have a “circle the wagons” mentality that prompts them to attack anyone who’s critical of industry practices. In many cases, they resort to the industry mantra that farm animal suffering only occurs as isolated cases, not as part of standard industry practices.

For example, a recent blog on the American Farm Bureau’s web site attacking the Nightline story entitled, “Enough is enough! I don’t abuse my animals!” lamented, “The alleged abuse that was showed [sic] on a dairy farm on ABC last night is not typical of how animals are cared for today.”

But is that really the case? No one interviewed in the Nightline feature disputed that cutting off cows’ tails without painkiller is a relatively common industry practice. Unfortunately, it’s not only painful when done, but it renders the animals more vulnerable to biting fly attacks as it removes their best weapon against them. A Colorado State 2005-2006 national study found that 82.3 percent of 113 dairies surveyed were still docking tails, and some experts say the practice’s use is increasing.

Despite being so common, routine tail-docking is opposed by the American Veterinary Medical Association. There’s so little scientific evidence to support benefits of tail-docking that even the National Milk Producers Federation says the practice is “not recommended.” And even the editor of Dairy Herd Management has editorialized, “the dairy industry should eliminate the routine practice of docking tails.”

So why are so many producers still cutting off cows’ tails? Why are some of the largest dairy operators in the nation going on TV to defend the practice? And why are Big Ag bloggers complaining about animal welfare advocates’ concerns with tail docking?

To their credit, some of the more reasonable voices in the California dairy industry didn’t stand in the way of a recently enacted bill banning routine tail-docking of cattle. And the California Farm Bureau and California Cattlemen’s Association actually worked with animal welfare advocates and veterinarians in support of the measure. But the agribusiness lobby in other states is fighting hard to prevent even this modest reform from advancing.

Some industry spokespeople admit that they shouldn’t “defend the indefensible.” It would show real leadership on their part to not only admit that some standard practices, like routine tail-docking of dairy cows, are indeed indefensible, but also to join consumers and animal welfare advocates in passing laws to prohibit the worst abuses.

You’d think this would be the kind of obvious animal abuse few people would hesitate to condemn. But what was the agribusiness industry’s response? Unfortunately, more of the same defensive posturing that’s become as predictable as the results of a major league baseball player’s steroid test.

Rather than trying to distance itself from the investigated facility, much of the established ag order went on the attack, with one commentator actually calling MFA’s investigation little more than a “smear campaign.” Can you imagine? Instead of accepting responsibility and trying to find a way animals won’t be treated so horrifically in the future, they simply attack the messenger.

In addition to paradoxically calling videotaped evidence of their own facility a “smear,” the industry is dutifully pointing out that the investigated factory farm passed its recent third-party audit of the United Egg Producers (UEP) with flying colors.

As if that erases the investigation’s findings.

Such assurances bring to memory the fact that the now-infamous California slaughter plant investigated by The Humane Society of the United States for downer abuse had not only passed all its third-party inspections, but was actually awarded by USDA as the school lunch program’s “supplier of the year.”

Even if all of the UEP’s voluntary guidelines were being met, would that ensure a high level of animal welfare? The UEP program allows hens to be confined in battery cages so small that each bird is allotted less space than a sheet of paper on which to live for more than a year before she’s slaughtered. We’re not exactly talking about stringent standards here, needless to say.

Perhaps even worse, the factory farm released an incredible statement of defense, alleging that the investigator “stood by and videotaped rather than taking care of the birds or doing his job.” Unfortunately for these accusers, the video speaks quite differently. In fact, it shows the investigator complaining to supervisors about the problems, with the response from one bluntly summing it up: “It don’t matter.”

So, the story repeats. Another factory farm is exposed with irrefutable video evidence of heinous abuse, and the industry rushes to redirect attention from its own misdeeds and points the finger elsewhere. In fact, one industry spokesperson is now calling for what she calls a “counter movement” to in order to get “their message” out to the public.

If past is prologue, I don’t think we need to wonder too much what such a “message” will sound like the next time an exposé is announced.