Woman arrested for filming a slaughterhouse from a public street.

UPDATE: Just 24 hours after the story broke, and following a massive amount of media coverage, prosecutors dropped all charges! 

Utah - Amy Meyer wanted to see the slaughterhouse for herself. She had heard that anyone passing by could view the animals, so she drove to Dale Smith Meatpacking Company in Draper City, Utah, and from the side of the road she could see through the barbed-wire fence. Piles of horns littered the property. Cows struggled with workers who tried to lead them into a building. And one scene in particular made her stop.

“A live cow who appeared to be sick or injured being carried away from the building in a tractor,” Meyer told me, “as though she were nothing more than rubble.”

As she witnessed this, Meyer did what most of us would in the age of smart phones and YouTube: she recorded.

When the slaughterhouse manager came outside and told her to stop, she replied that she was on the public easement and had the right to film. When police arrived, she said told them the same thing.

According to the police report, the manager said she was trespassing and crossed over the barbed-wire fence, but the officer noted “there was no damage to the fence in my observation.”

Meyer was allowed to leave. She later found out she was being prosecuted under the state’s new “ag-gag” law.

It’s telling that the owner of the slaughterhouse Amy Meyer filmed happens to be Darrell H. Smith, the town mayor. (Mayor Smith, the meatpacking company, and the local prosecutor did not return phone calls for comment). If that’s shocking to you, it shouldn’t be. In Iowa, for example, the nation’s first ag-gag law was sponsored by Rep. Annette Sweeney, who is the former director of the Iowa Angus Association.

This is the first prosecution in the country under one of these laws, which are designed to silence undercover investigators who expose animal welfare abuses on factory farms. The legislation is a direct response to a series of shocking investigations by groups like the Humane Society, Mercy for Animals, and Compassion Over Killing that have led to plant closures, public outrage, and criminal charges against workers.

Even the most sweeping ag-gag bills, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council model legislation, don’t explicitly target filming from a roadside. But Nebraska, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Vermont are all considering bills similar to the Utah law right now.

Pennsylvania’s bill criminalizes anyone who “records an image of, or sound from, the agricultural operation” or who “uploads, downloads, transfers or otherwise sends” the footage using the Internet.

 North Carolina’s bill doesn’t specifically mention factory farms or slaughterhouses: it is called the “Commerce Protection Act,” and it includes investigations of any industry. It was introduced on the same day a fifth employee of Butterball pleaded guilty to animal cruelty after an undercover investigation showed workers beating turkeys.
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/first-ag-gag-arrest-utah-amy-meyer/6948/

$240 million awarded in 'landmark' Atalissa workers case:

Robert Canino sobbed in a Davenport federal courtroom Wednesday when the judge announced the $240 million verdict.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission attorney advocated four years for 32 mentally disabled men and convinced a jury after five days of emotionally brutal testimony that their chances at normalcy and happiness were stolen by Henry's Turkey Service.

Henry’s, which also does business as Hill Country Farms, hasn’t paid $1.6 million in previous federal and state fines related to the men, according to records.

The jury returned what Canino believed to be the largest verdict in EEOC's history, finding that Henry's violated the Americans with Disabilities Act in paying the disabled workers 41 cents an hour, forcing them to live in a rodent-infested bunkhouse in Atalissa, and subjecting them to daily physical abuse and neglect.

U.S. District Judge Charles Wolle read aloud the verdict at 10:30 a.m. Canino cried upon hearing it and still fought tears trying to comment on it moments later.

“For the first time since 2009, the public, as represented by the jury, not only got to hear the whole story about these men, but fully understood the depth of the human experience they suffered,” he said.

The jury awarded each of the 32 workers $7.5 million for emotional and punitive damages. Jurors declined to comment outside the courthouse.

Kenneth Henry, the 72-year-old company's owner, left the courthouse with the assistance of a walker, saying he’ll appeal.

His company, based in Goldthwaite, Texas, hired the men, all at various stages of intellectual disability, and brought them to Iowa in the 1970s to work at a turkey processing plant in West Liberty. Henry testified that 1,500 mentally disabled men worked for him in more than 45 years.
http://qctimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/million-awarded-in-landmark-atalissa-workers-case/article_abb9eec0-243b-550c-9b91-8b2242bed513.html