Animal cruelty and lax food safety in the meat and poultry industries were revealed recently in undercover videos filmed at farms and processing plants and viewed all over the country - including California.

The industry's reaction? Reform those practices? No. Kill those videos.

The meat companies don't seem to want you to know what goes on where your food is produced. They have prodded legislators in this state, Tennessee, Vermont, Nebraska and elsewhere to try to stop environmental activists - or anybody, apparently - from investigating and documenting cruel treatment of animals and unsafe food processing.

In Sacramento, the oddly named Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, trotted out this week by Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, would require somebody recording a video at a farming operation to turn it over to law officers within 24 hours - in other words, before investigators could document any illegal activity under federal food-handling and safety laws. Fail to turn it in, and you pay a fine. Not surprisingly, the bill is sponsored by the California Cattlemen's Association.

Measures in Indiana, Arkansas and Pennsylvania, also spurred by the beef industry, would make it a crime to shoot videos at agricultural operations.

These kinds of bills are opposed by the Humane Society, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Teamsters union.

Even some other food industry organizations, at first attracted by the idea, backed away quickly, worried that the cattlemen have committed the worst PR gaffe since New Coke.

Another concern: The industry-backed movement, scattered but apparently well orchestrated, seems calculated to hobble the people's right to know - sometimes called the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The broad language in California's AB343, for instance, seems likely to have a chilling effect on reporting about misdeeds by the meat industry, and other industries as well, by mainstream reporters or any volunteer whistle-blower with a video camera.

It would be hard to name an issue more important to the public's interest than food that won't make you sick. Any legislation that tries to cloak threats to the safety of people's health is, as the California Newspaper Publishers Association puts it, "stupid."