When a federal judge last month put a hold on enforcement of a new Iowa law that criminalizes undercover investigations at livestock facilities, state Sen. Ken Rozenboom cried fowl.

“I think that we in the Legislature are the ones that make the laws,” the District 40 Republican told the Quad City Times. “I don’t think judges do that.”

But legislators may also own businesses that unfairly influence the bills they get passed. Judges can be more objective.

Rozenboom owns Rosewood Farms, a Mahaska County hog facility, with his brother, Calvin. Last March Ken Rozenboom was the floor manager for an "ag gag" law that makes a crime of “agricultural production facility trespass” by whistle-blowers or undercover activists trying to document animal mistreatment. A previous such law passed by the Legislature in 2012 was ruled unconstitutional.

Newly released pictures and video taken by animal rights activists inside the Rozenbooms' barns give perspective to both the senator's push for such a law and the judge's concerns.

Some of the images are deeply disturbing. They show an apparently injured piglet shaking, and other pigs feeding on a carcass. The camera picked up other dead pig remains on the floor — which activist Matt Johnson, who was there, described as slick from urine and excrement. Johnson is spokesman for the animal welfare group Direct Action Everywhere and said many of the ills he and three others saw when they entered two Rozenboom hog barns through unlocked doors at night in April seemed due to overcrowding.

Some pigs had infections. California veterinarian Sherstin Rosenberg, to whom Johnson showed the footage, said several had severe rectal prolapse, evidenced by bloody anuses. Judging from the scabbing and crusting, she wrote, those in the video had clearly been afflicted for several days, and that the condition, which can result from severe diarrhea or constipation, is life-threatening. The animal should be immediately removed and treated in a clean environment, she wrote.

My efforts to reach Rozenboom by phone and email were unsuccessful. But in a written statement sent to my colleague, reporter Donnelle Eller, he wrote that when the pictures were taken, his barns were leased to another farm; his company didn't own or manage the pigs or employ those who did. He said his company has since taken over management of those barns and has trained and supervises the current caretaker.

Johnson wasn't persuaded. "Even if it's true, it's his property; it's his farm. He bears responsibility," he said.

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Rozenboom called what was depicted in the pictures "careless animal husbandry practices that violate acceptable animal care protocols." But he wrote there was no evidence of animal abuse or of animal care laws being broken. The investigators, however, broke trespassing laws, he wrote. He also chided them for not showing the company the photos earlier: "Had they done so, we could have made immediate changes much sooner."

He may indeed have taken action if he had been notified sooner, assuming he really wasn't already aware of the conditions. But that just underscores why ag gag laws are a bad idea. If farm owners like Rozenboom are concerned about animal welfare, they should be thanking activists like his group, says Johnson.

Direct Action Everywhere doesn't deny it may break laws in defense of animals. Nor does it apologize. The organization does what it calls “open rescues,” livestreaming its actions. Johnson says what they reveal gives lie to what businesses claim to be protecting against: biosecurity threats. "They’re trying to conceal the horrible things happening to animals.”

Johnson and another activist pretended to be members of the industry when they showed up at Curtis Rozenboom's home a month after taking the pictures. They went equipped with protective clothing to prevent biosecurity threats, and asked to be shown one of the farms but were turned down.

Deceptive tactics can be debated, but shouldn't it be a conflict of interests for a lawmaker to push through laws that directly benefit his or her business to the detriment of people or animals? Rozenboom also chaired the Iowa Senate’s Natural Resources and Environment Committee while opposing a bill for a moratorium on new hog confinements. The bill died, as countless more animals will.

When the ag gag law was put on hold, the senator said he was “disgusted" that "we can’t protect honest, hard-working Iowans but we’ll protect criminals and people that lie for a living.” How about protecting animals?

Under the law now on hold, getting into an animal facility through deceptive means to do economic harm is a serious misdemeanor the first time, after which it's an aggravated one, punishable by prison time and fees. It can also rise to the level of conspiracy. Compare that to Iowa's animal neglect law, which makes it a simple misdemeanor to confine livestock without providing necessary sustenance or care or to injure or destroy it in a painful way. And Iowa's animal cruelty law applies only to actions against someone else’s animals. You're free to mistreat (but not torture) your own.

If only a majority of Iowa legislators showed the courage to balance interests when it comes to the state's sacred cow, big ag.

"Defendants have done little to show that (SF 519) responds to ongoing issues of public concern unrelated to the suppression of free speech," wrote U.S. District Judge James Gritzner, who imposed the injunction. "By contrast, the public benefits from people and organizations exercising First Amendment rights and educating the public about important issues relating to animal abuse and safety at agricultural production facilities.”

Bravo to him. If legislators made the right laws, Sen. Rozenboom, judges wouldn't need to do the cleanup.