Laura Passaglia, the Sonoma County Superior Court judge who presided over the trial, barred Hsiung from showing most evidence of animal cruelty, depriving him of the ability to show his motives for entering the farms.

What a bitch.

For those who aren't necessarily concerned about a factory farm environment, they may not consider these animals as "valuable" enough to care.

However, to appeal to those people on a different level, that is the food you eat. And the people producing it are being very very very very protective about how it is produced. They are doing something to your food that they don't want you to know about, and it certainly isn't good that they're trying to hide it.

Factory farming is a huge reason for disease outbreaks. Bird flu? Mad cow disease? Right here, folks. And they'll package up your food without a thought other than the money they make from it.

Are you okay with the animals you eat living in conditions that could expose you to health risks? I hope you would be outraged if a food company was potentially putting you at risk because of their concern over their profits.

You should care.

You're more than likely to go to prison for messing with the rich's revenue streams.

This has been true for a long time. Upton Sinclair, writing over 100 years ago about improving working conditions (for humans) ended up missing the mark and the end result was food quality regulations. Now, folks are trying to expose animal cruelty but end up getting stronger protections for corporations 🤡 we just can't seem to care about living things 🙁

It’s not illegal to “expose” animal cruelty in California, and no one has ever been charged with doing so. Animal cruelty is prosecuted all the time in California. The headline is stupid. The headline is wrong.

There's a bit of difference between "exposing animal cruelty" and stealing livestock.

It is weird just how secretive the slaughterhouses are.

I don't usually discuss this sort of thing very much with carnists IRL, because I tend to find their "arguments" and their positions rather tired and boring and in general completely irrational. The "but where do you get your protein?" type of questions or "I tried being a vegan/vegetarian but it didn't agree with me because of my special DNA due to my ancestry of northern Europeans or whatever" conspiracy theories are especially fun. It's usually the carnists that go out of their way to be activists about their choices, not me.

I'll usually answer direct questions and leave it at that. I find there is a certain type of carnist that get especially defensive (almost always men suffering from toxic masculinity) around the very presence of veg*ns and want to get into arguments, especially while eating.

But there have been times where I've asked why slaughterhouses have so much secrecy in some of these "conversations" where the carnist just won't drop the topic and I've noticed that gives them some pause. At least for a small glimmer of time. I think it is because these carnist activists are the ones with the most amount of guilt and they know that most (normal) people don't want to witness what goes on in slaughterhouses...

Seems like the next option is to arrange for mass arrests in a very public direct action. Massively overflow the jail in that judge's district with animal rights activists until they're forced to dismiss the cases.

work in a non food producing field that uses the same stringent requirements as food to table is suppose to have

one thing constantly cropping up in workroom discussions is the fact people will grab a competitors product with cheaper inferior questionable ingredients that comes from places not paying employees a proper wage unclean conditions the whole nine yards every time and price is not always the final deciding factor

this will take more than people standing up for animal rights (thanks and shout out to the ones on the front line) might be a whole change of culture that is needed before this issue could be addressed

Just sub the title for “Wealthy people or corporations are far less likely to be punished than someone whistleblowing that makes them look bad.”

Generically apply that our legal system.