[ABC News - video at full story link]

Fearing arrest under laws pushed by the agriculture industry, animal
rights activists have halted undercover camera investigations into
animal cruelty in five farm states, including Iowa and Utah where the
laws went into effect last year.

"We are not conducting our investigations in those five states," said
Nathan Runkle, executive director of Mercy for Animals, a group whose
most recent hidden-camera exposé led to criminal charges against
employees at the largest dairy farm in Idaho.

The Humane Society of the United States has also stopped its
hidden-camera investigations in those states as a result of what it
concedes has been a victory for the agribusiness industry.

"If you think that chilling speech and closing the curtain on our food
production is winning, then yes, they've won," Wayne Pacelle, the
executive director of the Humane Society of the United States, told
ABC News in an interview to be broadcast tonight on "World News with
Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline."

The new state laws are part of a campaign being waged by lobbyists for
the agriculture industry to put an end to the undercover videos that
have cast a harsh light on the operations of large-scale farms, often
called factory farms by their critics.

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full story:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ag-gag-laws-animal-cruelty-exposes-blocked/story?id=18337864

[UK Progressive Magazine]

The most effective way to keep American citizens silent and under control is through fear. The "spiral of silence theory" describes the process by which one opinion becomes dominant as those who perceive their opinion to be in the minority do not speak up because they fear isolation from society, or in this case, being prosecuted as a terrorist.

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) is hoping to accomplish just that by making it an "act of terrorism" for anyone to investigate animal cruelty, food safety or environmental violations on corporate-controlled farms producing the bulk of US meat, eggs and dairy products.

The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, designed to protect Big Ag and Big Energy, was written by lawyers for the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force, which is funded by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). That in itself should send red flags through the earth's atmosphere"

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full story:
http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/expose-food-abuses-face-terrorism-indictment/article21545.html