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SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah lawmaker is targeting animal extremists in a bill that creates stiff penalties for recording pictures, video or sound on a private farm or agricultural operation.
The legislation from Rep. John Mathis, R-Vernal, makes it a class A misdemeanor for "agricultural operation interference" if someone "knowingly or intentionally" makes the recording on the property without consent. A subsequent offense becomes a third-degree felony under HB187.
You take these photographs, you push this image out there, and you can actually hurt their businesses in the process.
–Rep. Lee Perry, R-Perry.
#perry_quote
"I think this raises to another level, because this is domestic terrorism," said Rep. Lee Perry, R-Perry.
Perry, also a lieutenant with Utah Highway Patrol, has experience investigating animal extremist crimes in northern Utah. He spoke at length Friday about the need for a tougher charge than trespassing for perpetrators.
"You take these photographs, you push this image out there, and you can actually hurt their businesses in the process," Perry said.
He said these actions happen in Utah, as they do across the country and around the world. A quick search of YouTube yielded a post from a group that identifies itself as the "Animal Equality Investigation Team." Last August, the group released video from what was supposed to be a mink farm in Spain. It included grisly images of workers flinging minks into a bin, as well as pictures of carcasses of dead minks after supposed gassings.
"Using HD cameras and hidden cameras, the activists documented the end that awaits over 300,000 minks in the fur industry," text below the post read.
Perry warned not to necessarily take all the videos and pictures at face value.
"What I see is that they go on and they try to inflame the animals so they can get a recording that makes it sound worse than it is, or they'll go on and set up a photograph of something," Perry said.
At the Animal Advocacy Alliance of Utah, executive director Anne Davis acknowledged that can be a tactic of extremists. She decried HB187, though, saying it paints with too broad of a brush.
"If a child were on a field trip at a farm and they took a picture ‘knowingly' - would that child be prosecuted?" Davis questioned, citing that scenario as an example from a legislative hearing earlier in the week.
Davis also said making the act of taking pictures on private property the statutory equivalent of torturing a pet sends the wrong message to advocates that worked for 13 years to get "Henry's Law" on the books.
"What it does is it really treats that as if it were nothing," Davis said. "It really trivializes that effort."
The bill cleared the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee and is awaiting further consideration in the full House.
KSL News was told Friday Mathis was unavailable for comment all day.
