The Guardian on #AgGag: “The battle for animal welfare is a battle over information”

by Will Potter on May 7, 2014

in Terrorism Legislation

guardian-ag-gag-laws-potterThere’s a wonderful column in The Guardian by Siobhan O’Sullivan about my Australian speaking tour against ag-gag laws.

Here’s an excerpt:

The popular slogan “if slaughterhouses had glass walls everyone would be vegetarian” is indicative of a view commonly held by animal advocates: that the biggest barrier to either improving animal welfare, or ending animal agriculture, is community ignorance about what really goes on in factory farms.

Intriguingly, farmers also often claim that the community is ignorant of their growing interest in animal welfare. If only ignorant city-slickers knew how concerned farmers are about their animals, they would not be vulnerable to manipulation by alarmist activists.

This month Will Potter, author of Green is the New Red, tours Australiato deal with these questions and contradictions: who controls the flow of information over agriculture? And how much should the urban elite be allowed to know about how animals are transformed into meat?

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