Ag-gag discussion

This is a productive and educational Al Jazeera interview with Will Potter, Wayne Pacelle of HSUS, and the “animal agriculture industry” organization* about the AETA and ag-gag laws.

I’ll save most of my commentary for other occasions, but I was especially pleased that they discuss the connections to ALEC and the implications that go far beyond the animal rights and animal welfare movements. (If you’re not very familiar with ALEC – or even if you are – you should watch Bill Moyers’ “The United States of ALEC.”)

*The representative’s name doesn’t matter. I’ve long been fascinated by these corporate mouthpieces. It’s a strange reversal of the idea that corporations are people – here, people have willingly sought to empty themselves of human content to become an extension of corporations. So I find them interesting in this sense, but there’s zero point in trying to address them as people when they’re acting in this capacity. Nothing in their canned recitations is real human speech or engagement. They might as well be CGI.