Perdue will no longer require farmers to request permission before visually or audibly documenting their chicken operations, says Tom Philpott in Mother Jones. Since October 2014, the company had required in its contracts that all growers receive written consent before “taking photographs, images, audio and /or video recordings of the chickens and/or PERDUE representatives.”
But thanks to advocacy pressure, Perdue — the fourth-largest chicken producer in the country — has agreed to strike the clause going forward. Two days before Perdue announced the decision, CEO Jim Perdue told Meatingplace, a trade publication, that his company was invested in developing greater “trust and transparency.”
Before it decided to remove the clause from its contract, Perdue’s senior vice president of food safety, Bruce Stewart-Brown, defended the rule to Mother Jones, “We want to be part of the conversation — if a farmer sees something wrong, we want to know about it and work together to fix it. He added that kids often take photos from the chicken facilities to show in school, and it’s important to the company that they get the best quality shots possible, not to mention that Perdue ultimately owns the birds and so control who can film them. (The farmers own the facilities, not the chickens.)”
Across the country, states have passed “ag-gag” laws in an attempt to keep animal-welfare groups from filming on industrial farms. Leah Garces, executive director of Compassion in World Farming, said that Perdue’s former prohibition against video and photography was essentially the company “ag-gagging their farmers. … What if a farmer sees excessive welfare issues, food-safety concerns, or misconduct by a representative of Perdue, reports them to the company, but no action is taken?” Compassion in World Farming released a video last year of a Perdue farmer speaking out against the company’s treatment of both chickens and farmers.