Around mature developed areas, protection of a wonderful relic of our history, the family farm, is a high priority.  It provides open space, greenery and a vision of the once-bucolic nation that few would believe existed if they didn’t see it with their own eyes.  They are indeed worthy of protection as the last vestiges of an agrarian society.

In Florida, however, State Senator Jim Norman has taken his passion for farms to the extreme.  Via  Eugene Volokh and Kevin Underhill, Norman has  proposed a bill making it a felony to take pictures of a “legitimate” farm without the consent of the owner.  On its face, the law seems ludicrous, but the foundation appears to stem from farms coming under the scrutiny of groups like PETA and environmental organizations that fault the treatment of animals and farming methods. 

Via Treehugger, the point is driven home.

Norman’s motivation for the law originates in the increasing negative publicity that factory farming practices have received after a number of undercover videos taken by people posing as farmworkers exposed animal abuse and generally horrific conditions.

Ultimately Tom Laskawy’s reading of the situation in general is correct:

This is about the tendency in the food industry and, sadly, to believe that transparency and knowledge are the enemy of a functioning food system. People must not know how animals are slaughtered and processed. People must not know the nature and safety of all the chemicals involved in agricultural and food production and processing. People must not know if food is genetically modified. This belief now appears to undergird the very logic of the American industrial food system.

And points out, “It doesn’t take a close reading of the Constitution to know you can make photographing private property from a distance illegal.” Which is mostly true, but there are exceptions made for military installations and other places on national security grounds.

While blawgs have been quick to point out the faults of the law itself, and ridicule its proposal as either absurd or an over-reaction to some barely articulable harm, those involved in causes that seek transparency in the  “American industrial food system” aren’t laughing about it at all.

Indeed, there is a strong, if small, corps of people who go though great lengths to expose what they believe to be abject cruelty toward animals in the farming/ranching operations.  And they aren’t just taking photos from the road of the nice looking silo.  They are actively infiltrating operations.

But that wouldn’t have been the case with undercover videos of factory farming, which obviously require a person to be on the property rather than just shooting from a public space, and makes the whole thing enter into some legal grey area. Though, I’m inclined to believe that existing laws on clandestine filming and photography, as well as trespassing, are sufficient to cover the matter.

Which is all to say that whether this bill proceeds very far or not–I certainly hope it doesn’t–I wouldn’t be so hasty to dismiss it as legally absurd with a wave of the hand.

As Eugene points out, the bill as written is replete with flaws of imprecision, overbreadth and plain vanilla First Amendment violations.  As Kevin points out, the idea that taking a picture of a farm from the road could conceivably expose someone to a first degree felony conviction with a penalty of up to 30 years in prison goes so far beyond shocking as to be laughable. 

It is not a joke, however, to either the farmers/ranchers or those who find their methods abusive.

An unspoken reality is that most of us are carnivores, enjoying a good steak or Grandma’s meatballs.  They come from cows.  We know it, but we chose not to think about it.  We have no plans to give up eating meat, but we really have no desire to be confronted with how it gets from hoof to plate.

And eat your vegetables is a mantra that almost every child hears, but neither mother nor child wants to know what’s sprayed on them so that we can find brussel sprouts on the supermarket shelf looking oh-so-appetizing at such a reasonable price.  Take a quick glance at the organic version, and then its price, and consider the likelihood of much of America being able to afford to serve up a plate to the kiddies every day.

There is a huge battle being fought in the trenches of the farming and ranching industries, and not without reason.  Ultimately, people need to eat, and farms and ranches need to remain in business unless our concern for the welfare of domestic food animals and ingesting pesticides, both in our apples and water overtakes our hunger.

While the proposed law clearly goes far beyond the limits of law and reason, and is itself worthy of all the ridicule that’s been heaped upon it, the issue it seeks to address is quite important to all involved.  The fact that Jim Norman would put us in prison for pulling out the old Brownie and hoping Elsie smiles is just a product of incredibly poor drafting and total ignorance of unintended consequences.

The more fundamental question of whether you want to see videos of animals being slaughtered that will make your stomach turn, or whether you think soylent green is a viable alternative, is still in dispute.  We can make fun of this law all day long, but it belies some very difficult issues and problems for both sides of the debate.