Antagonistic 1)  Stacking the Deck Rebuttal

“In other words, these laws turn journalists and the investigators of crimes into criminals.”

These laws are not meant to criminalize reporters for the sake of their career, but because the incidents with animals they choose to report are not necessarily fair to all other farms. Many farms that treat animals as humanely as possible are being misrepresented by the isolated evidence from a handful of farms that choose cruelty and abuse over humane treatment.

Antagonistic 2) Stacking the Deck Rebuttal

“Whistleblowers are crucial in exposing animal cruelty, unsafe working conditions and health, labor and environmental violations.”

These factory farms don’t represent the entirety of farms in the US. There are many others, such as dairy farms, where animals are treated fairly and humanely. Only highlighting the unfair treatment sheds a bad light on everyone. Especially since the “whistleblowers” are undercover, that makes it doubly unfair to release footage. The cameramen are there under false pretenses and that is a violation of privacy.

Supportive 2) Inconclusive Evidence Rebuttal

“Upon finally learning of the mistreatment, the dairy owner immediately terminated all employees associated with the unforgivable acts.”

Had someone not been there documenting the abuse against the animals, it most likely would have taken much longer to catch the abusers, if at all. If we make it illegal to catch animal abuse in the act, we are letting it go on indeterminately. Although it is unfortunate that the unsuspecting dairy owner was charged with animal abuse, it’s better to have stopped the abuse than for him to continue in his work not knowing how his employees were acting.

Supportive 3) Insufficient Evidence Rebuttal

“With 98% of farms and ranches in the U.S. family owned and operated, I know that today’s food is grown by people who care about the animals, the environment and the final retail product.”

But the other 2% of farms are factory farms, and we’ve seen the abuse and awful living conditions. Why wouldn’t we want to eliminate that if at all possible? If we suppress the undercover workers, we not only take away our right to free speech, we also eliminate the possibility to improve the quality of life for workers and animals on factory farms alike.