N.C. GOP Leaders to Receive Video Appeal From Mary Matalin to Drop Controversial ‘Ag-Gag’ Bill
N.C. GOP Leaders to Receive Video Appeal From Mary Matalin to Drop Controversial ‘Ag-Gag’ Bill
For Immediate Release:
May 23, 2013
Contact:
Kaitlynn Kelly 202-483-7382
Raleigh, N.C. — PETA’s newest ally in fighting a GOP-sponsored bill in North Carolina that seeks to ban cruelty investigations on factory farms: Republican pundit Mary Matalin.
“You may be wondering what a meat-eating conservative Republican like me is doing in a PETA video,” says Matalin in the graphic three-minute testimony. “[Y]ou have before you a bill that would criminalize filming on factory farms and in slaughterhouses. … [I’m] asking you to please vote against these ‘ag-gag’ bills.”
Matalin is sending the video to senators in North Carolina to ask them to vote down Senate Bill (S.B.) 648, which would criminalize the documentation of patterns of routine cruelty to animals on factory farms. As Matalin explains in the video, PETA’s investigations on factory farms have led to convictions on the charge of cruelty to animals under state laws—convictions that would be virtually impossible if S.B. 648 became law. Last week, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam vetoed a similar bill after the state’s attorney general said that it could “constitute an unconstitutional burden on news gathering.” Another similar bill was recently deemed unconstitutional by Indiana’s GOP speaker of the house. “Ag-gag” bills have also died this year in Arkansas, California, Indiana, New Hampshire, New York, Tennessee, and Wyoming.
As she introduces a video clip about a case that reveals routine beatings and even sexual abuse of pigs on a Midwestern factory farm, Matalin states, “A meat-trade magazine called the case a ‘wake-up call’ for the industry. Unfortunately, factory farms keep hitting the snooze button, and instead of fixing the problems, they’re trying to blame the messenger.”
You can see Matalin’s three-minute PETA video here. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
