Litigating Livestock

In Idaho we are all too familiar with animal activist groups hurting livestock producers with surreptitious videos that often cloud the truth. That is why the legislature agreed to enact the so-called ag gag laws that prohibited such groups from invading the privacy of agricultural producers. Apparently new tactics have been implemented in what I call death by 1000 cuts… translation, lawyers. I talked to Animal Agriculture Alliance spokesperson Casey Kinler.

“When you say that animal activist groups continue and apparently they're trying different stunts. What's the latest. I think the latest is we've seen a lot of the litigation in North Carolina and it really ranges from whether they come at it from a health standpoint or an environmental standpoint. We've seen a lot of that lately, litigation issues in North Carolina specifically.

 

So what they do is the animal activists line up a bunch of attorneys and go after people who are raising hogs raising beef raising sheep basically litigate them to financial death. Is that what their intention is?

 

Yeah I think they intentionally act to cause the monetary damages and really just to put them out of business. We've seen a lot in North Carolina specifically where hog farms are. But really what they do is they gather community members and have them be the spokesperson but really they are just kind of feeding them information about what's going on. So the animal rights group can win the case.”