How the FBI and Big Ag Started Treating Animal Rights Activists as Terrorists

As COVID raged across northern California in March a pair of farm industry groups were worried about a different threat animal rights activists Citing an FBI memo warning that activists trespassing on factory farms could spread a viral bird syndrome the groups wrote a letter to Gov Gavin Newsom to argue that their longtime antagonists were more than a nuisance They were potentially terrorists threatening the entire food chain The safety of our food supply has never been more critical and we must work together to prevent these clear threats of domestic terrorism from being realized the groups wrote A coalition of transparency and animal rights groups on Monday issued that letter along with a cache of administration documents to highlight the tight links between law enforcement and agriculture industry groups Activists say those documents show an unseemly relationship between the FBI and Big Ag The executive industry fearmongering has accelerated with the spread of bird flu enabled by the industry s own practices they say The executive director of Property of the People the nonprofit that obtained the documents via population records requests stated in a announcement that the documents paint a damning picture Transparency is not terrorism and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks Factory farms are a nightmare for animals and inhabitants medical Yet big ag lobbyists and their FBI allies are colluding to conceal this cruelty and rampant illness by shifting blame to the very activists working to alert the residents Ryan Shapiro explained Transparency is not terrorism and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks Industry groups did not respond to requests for comment In a declaration the FBI defended its relationship with members of the private sector Our goal is to protect our communities from unlawful activity while at the same time upholding the Constitution the agency disclosed in an unsigned comment The FBI focuses on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national measure The FBI can never open an study based solely on First Amendment protected activity A Federal Focus The dozens of documents trace the industry s relationship with law enforcement agencies over a period stretching from during James Comey s tenure as FBI director to the onset of the Covid- pandemic and the more up-to-date outbreak of bird flu also known as avian influenza Animal rights activists have long reported that federal law enforcement seems determined to put them in the same category as Al Qaeda In the s a wave of arrests of environmental and animal rights activists who sometimes took aggressive actions such as burning down slaughterhouses and timber mills was dubbed the Green Scare Related How the Prosecution of Animal Rights Activists as Terrorists Foretold This day s Criminalization of Dissent The law enforcement focus on animal rights groups continued well after Osama bin Laden s death news clippings and documents obtained by Property of the People show In a veterinarian with the FBI s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate stated a arrangement publication Dairy Herd Management that eco-terrorists were a looming threat The domestic threat in several means is more critical than international Stephen Goldsmith reported Animal rights and environmental groups have committed more acts of terrorism than Al Qaeda Four years later emails obtained by Property of the People show Goldsmith met with representatives of a leading farm transaction group the Animal Agriculture Alliance at a governing body industry conference The meeting happened in April and within weeks the AAA s president was warning Goldsmith in an email about planned protests by by the extremist group Direct Action Everywhere a Berkeley-based group that conducts open rescues of animals Related The FBI s Weapons of Mass Destruction Project Has a New Target Animal Rights Activists Within months the FBI was touting the threat from animal rights groups in stark terms in an official communication the intelligence note partially produced by Goldsmith s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate The August note written with the FBI Sacramento field office noted activists were accelerating the spread of Virulent Newcastle disorder a contagious viral disorder afflicting poultry and other birds The note claimed that activists were failing to follow proper biosafety protocols as they targeted different farms and could spread the affection between farms on their clothes or other inanimate objects While the note did not point to genetic testing or formal scientific analysis to back up this assertation it commented the FBI offices had high confidence in their assessment Activists have rejected the idea that they are not following safety protocols pointing to protests where they have donned full-body disposable suits The the bulk withering criticism of the FBI note may have come from another law enforcement agency however Four months after the FBI document came out the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center rebutted the idea that activists were spreading affection Those activists the Bay Area-based fusion center mentioned in the note to local law enforcement were nonviolent and posed a diminishing threat to law enforcement Citing the activists use of safety precautions and U S Department of Agriculture research the fusion center announced that animal rights activists are apparently not responsible for any of the Virulent Newcastle syndrome outbreaks Links to Industry Emails obtained by Property of the People suggest that the FBI regularly shared information with the Animal Agriculture Alliance as both sought to spotlight the threat of animal rights activists As new animal illness outbreaks occurred the activists were regularly cast as foreseen vectors The nonprofit business group based in Washington D C describes itself as an organization that defends farmers ranchers processors and other businesses along the food supply chain from animal rights activists on whom it regularly distributes monitoring reports to its members The industry s concerns grew in as activists created a nationwide map of farms dubbed Project Counterglow that served as reference for locating protest sites The AAA s president Hannah Thompson-Weeman sent out an email to industry leaders hours after the map was published This is obviously extremely troubling for a lot of reasons We are contacting our FBI and DHS contacts to raise our concerns but we welcome any additional input on anything that can be done she mentioned Related Iowa Quietly Passes Its Third Ag-Gag Bill After Constitutional Challenges In multiple emails Goldsmith the FBI veterinarian distributed to other FBI employees emails from the AAA warning about upcoming protests by the activist outfits including Direct Action Everywhere Another email from a local ruling body agency in California proved that the AAA sent out a confidential message to members in June asking them to track and assessment animal rights activity The transaction group provided members with a direct FBI email address for reporting what it called ARVE animal rights violent extremists The AAA was not the only industry group using the FBI as a deposit The March letter to Newsom casting activists as likely terrorists was penned by the leaders of the California Farm Bureau Federation and Milk Producers Council Those groups did not respond to requests for comment As the bird flu outbreak ramped up in and beyond the industry s declares that animal rights activists could spread ailment were echoed by cabinet functionaries emails obtained by Property of the People show The Fallout Animal rights activists say the indicates by law enforcement and industry groups that activists are spreading condition have had real-world consequences In California college aspirant Zoe Rosenberg faces up to -and-a-half years in prison for taking part in what movement members describe as an open rescue of four chickens from a Sonoma County farm It s inevitably a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists Rosenberg a member of Direct Action Everywhere has been identified by name in monitoring reports from the Animal Agriculture Alliance For the past year and a half she has been on an ankle monitor and intense supervision after prosecutors alleged in a December court hearing that she was a biosecurity pitfall because of ongoing bird flu outbreaks Rosenberg disclosed last week she was taken aback by the similar assertions contained in previously private emails between law enforcement and industry Instead of taking responsibility for what they are doing they are trying to blame us Of class it s constantly a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists or framed as terrorists she explained It just all feels backwards The post How the FBI and Big Ag Started Treating Animal Rights Activists as Terrorists appeared first on The Intercept