Slaughterhouse Filming Leads To Arrest

Slaughterhouse filming led to an arrest.

On February 8, animal rescue worker Amy Meyer and a colleague had found a slaughterhouse with a public view through a barbed wire fence. Dale T. Smith and Sons Meat Packing Company in Draper, Utah had been pushing cows through the works in plain sight.

Amy Meyer, 25, had parked across the street and stepped into a public strip of land just outside the fence, where they saw the slaughterhouse doors wide open. Despite not being an employee, she had begun filming the operations as a forklift was pushing what may have been a lame cow, which was illegal to slaughter.

According to the Ag Gag laws, slaughterhouse filming is also illegal. Recording or taking pictures of the operations on the property of a meat processing plant is against the law. However, that didn’t stop Amy Meyer from literally taking the law into her own hands and filming it anyway.

Agricultural industries created the Ag Gag law as a way to keep the public from having to witness the not so pretty goings-on behind the scenes of where their meat comes from. Progress has led the meat processing industry away from grazing and into mechanized factory-style feeding and slaughtering, eliminating the need for farm land and increasing efficiency.

However, animal activists have been fighting the processing of meat for a long time. This is why most of them have become strict vegetarians, refusing to eat or drink anything that comes from an animal.

Slaughterhouse filming could also further expose the employment of potentially illegal immigrants with knives and other tools who hand-slaughter each animal. The industrialization has led to faster lines and an increase of injury to said workers, whose jobs are legitimate and legal on the most part.

Emily Meredith, Communications Director for the Animal Agriculture Alliance, says:

“The animal agriculture industry has nothing to hide. But there’s a difference between having nothing to hide and allowing activists – with a blatant agenda to put an end to the consumption of meat, milk and eggs – to gain access to family farms in illicit and fraudulent ways, take video, and then cut and run to later release that video under a big donate now button.”

What do you think of slaughterhouse filming leading to the arrest of Amy Meyer?