The Des Moines Register

Americans don’t know how their food is produced, polls show. The agricultural industry will cite such surveys when the public calls for more oversight of how food is produced.

But does the industry really want you to know?

Of course not. That’s why Iowa and other states have passed “ag gag” laws, which criminalize efforts to expose violations related to animal cruelty and food safety.

A coalition of public-interest groups filed a lawsuit this month to challenge Iowa’s five-year-old law prohibiting “agricultural production facility fraud.” Groups challenging the law include the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and Bailing Out Benji, an Ames-based nonprofit that protests "puppy mills."

The law makes it a misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to one year in jail, to obtain access to an agricultural production facility by false pretenses, or to make a false statement in connection with a job application at such a facility.

Iowa lawmakers ignored the fact that Iowa already had laws against trespass. And they originally tried to make it a crime to produce or distribute in any photographs, videos or written materials descriptions of animal abuse.

The attorney general’s office told lawmakers that likely violated the First Amendment. So in 2012, they revised the bill to prohibit journalists, watchdog organizations, whistleblowers or others from gaining access to their facilities. Then-Gov. Terry Branstad signed it into law.

The ACLU believes the law could penalize a reporter, for example, for not disclosing his or her full identity.

Most media organizations rarely do undercover investigations, and only in exceptional circumstances and only after thorough consideration of the ethical and legal questions involved. But the technique has a storied history in American journalism. Upton Sinclair’s reporting in the Chicago stockyards in 1904 led to “The Jungle” and reforms in meatpacking and food safety. Other undercover reporting has led to changes in health care and education.

But it’s telling that Iowa’s law singles out agriculture for this special legal protection.

As we have noted before, ag gag laws in Iowa and other states are based on the twisted notion that when it comes to exposing violations and problems in the nation's food chain, the government must protect the private interests of industry even if it means putting the public at risk.

These laws impose criminal penalties even in cases where all of the public disclosures are truthful, accurate and in the public interest. In other words, they make it illegal to speak the truth, which is contrary to the fundamental American principle of free speech.

How is a livestock operation harmed by the reporting of facts, unless those facts reveal uncomfortable truths?

Courts in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming have overturned ag-gag laws. Iowa lawmakers should save a judge and taxpayers the trouble and put this mistake of a law out of its misery, for good.

This editorial is the opinion of The Des Moines Register’s editorial board: David Chivers, president; Carol Hunter, executive editor; Lynn Hicks, opinion editor; and Andie Dominick, editorial writer.