Good Ag-Gag

I have a great undercover story for you. We all are so aware of the story last year involving the unfortunate events that occurred at the Bettencourt Dairy in Idaho. An animal activist group videoed the horrible abuse of some dairy cows by deranged workers. That put a black eye on the face of animal agriculture and prompted a lot of dialogue about invasion of privacy and so on. Then the so-called ag-gag laws were passed that made it illegal to go onto anybody’s property and surreptitiously video anything. Of course, the passage of that legislation created fervor amongst the more liberal thinkers out there including all animal activist groups. The thinking was, if you don’t have anything to hide, why do you object to people coming onto your property and taking videos. Well, those issues are always going to stay on the table but here is a story that might help balance the scale. If you have ever seen the TV show Undercover Boss then you get the picture, literally. A boss puts on a disguise and walks into his own business with video equipment and checks out what is going on. On that very show, the Scott Brothers dairy in San Jacinto, Calif. produces yogurt for a chain of yogurt stores called Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt. Their CEO, Amit Kleinberger, made an undercover visit to the Scott Brothers Dairy as one of the Undercover Boss episodes and the end of the story is that Mr. Kleinberger was very pleased by what he found. Here’s Kay Johnson Smith, president and CEO of Animal Agriculture Alliance who knows both parties. “The level of trust and good dialogue has increased between both parties.”