Cruelty to animals is an important topic in a farm state such as ours. However, when the Iowa Legislature passed House File 589, criminalizing undercover investigations on farms, it was not acting to deal with the mistreatment of animals. Instead, lawmakers went to the effort of declaring that intentional discovery and reporting of such behavior is the thing that needs to be outlawed.

If you find out by accident, that’s probably still allowed.

Defenders of the bill take some contortions to defend it. Craig Hill, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, said in a press release: “We need to be assured that hired workers and others entering our farms act ethically and responsibly. With that transparency comes trust that everyone working with our livestock also believes in the compassionate care of our animals; responsible Iowa livestock farmers don’t tolerate bad actors who turn a blind eye on generations of established veterinary animal care standards.”

It would be nice to think that trust is all we need, but that’s not the lesson history has been trying to teach us.

Granted, sneakiness is always annoying. However, those sneaky videographers were trying to find out if our trust is warranted. Instead, they found “bad actors” who need to work somewhere else. It seems unlikely that livestock producers are going to take care of this by monitoring their neighbors and calling them out.

The care and management of animals isn’t always pretty. A delicate soul with a video camera might be alarmed by a practice that’s necessary and acceptable. But a video recording provides a way to evaluate such claims.

Maybe someday the Legislature will decide that a law in the “ag gag” spirit is needed for other businesses, too.

But no matter what the law says, remember that each of your employees is privy to at least some of your business practices. They don’t need a video camera to spread the word.