Iowa’s Undercover Law

A recent article in The Atlantic looks at the likelihood that Iowa’s failed bill to criminalize undercover investigations at factory farms will reappear in the state’s next legislative session. The proposed bill easily passed in the Iowa House, but the Senate session closed without a decision. The agribusiness interests that supported the bill, including Monsanto, DuPont, and the Iowa Poultry Association, have reason to hope for its resurrection, as The Atlantic piece points out, because the bill truly targets the systematic cruelties inherent to the factory farming of animals, not the exceptionally cruel “recreational abuse” that many undercover investigations capture.