Proposed legislation aimed at protecting South Dakota farms from potential “agro-terrorism” activities could have a secondary effect of limiting access to information about the state’s largest animal feeding operations.
Senate Bill 14 seeks to strengthen a set of existing laws that make it a crime for anyone to steal farm animals, release animals, trespass on farms or interfere with farm operations.
As written, the bill also would add criminal penalties for using deception to enter or gain employment at an agricultural operation or to use cameras or other surveillance methods to spy on a farm or agricultural research facility. The bill also would make it a crime to interfere with or destroy crops or structures at farms and agricultural research facilities.
“Essentially, it’s a property protection, property rights bill for farmers and ranchers,” the bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Casey Crabtree (R-Madison) said.
The measure, Crabtree said, is similar to laws passed over roughly the past 15 years in Iowa that sought to prevent animal-rights activists or anyone else from entering or recording activities at farms in order to find evidence of possible animal mistreatment or abuse.
Dubbed “ag-gag” laws by opponents, the laws were challenged in court on First Amendment grounds. Despite some lower court rulings, the Iowa laws most similar to Crabtree’s proposal were upheld as constitutional by a federal appeals court in 2024.
Crabtree said he hasn’t heard of widespread efforts to infiltrate or interfere with South Dakota farm operations, but a mink farm in Arlington has experienced problems in the past.
The drafting of SB 14 was aided by a number of farm groups that gathered last summer to identify ways to help agricultural producers in the 2025 legislative session, said Matthew Bogue, public policy director for the South Dakota Farm Bureau Federation.
You can read the full article at the Mitchell Republic.