Silent slaughter: how freedom of speech and expression restrictions keep animal abuses hidden and stifle animal welfare activism in Europe and the United States

Billions of animals worldwide are used annually for human consumption. The agricultural industry enjoys a high-level of state protection because of its role in supplying the populace with food, and in turn, supporting the nation’s security. In Europe and the United States, activists make similar challenges to status quo animal industry practices: activists use video cameras to expose animal abuses and share their findings with the public. Several U.S. states with strong animal agricultural industries have passed “ag-gag” laws aimed at outlawing many of these activities, including filming undercover and entering slaughterhouses under false pretenses. Finding these laws restrict free speech and impede efforts to gather evidence for whistling blowing operations, activists have challenged these laws in U.S. federal district courts. This paper examines three of these lawsuits, including two in which activists won rather “easily” under favorable U.S. free speech jurisprudence. Next, I compare these cases to three free speech and expression cases brought by animal activists in Europe. I use this comparison to argue that even well written and strategically crafted “ag-gag” laws are unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny in the future because U.S. free speech jurisprudence exists to protect against the very purpose of ag-gag laws: government-led silencing of speech at the request of a powerful industry group.