13/08/2026
THESE LAWS ARE RIDICULOUS â WHEN DID PROTECTING ANIMALS BECOME THE CRIME?
I have been looking into animal activism laws around the world, and the deeper I go, the more ridiculous I personally think some of this legislation becomes.
And before anyone jumps into the comments with:
âBut trespassing is illegal.â
Yes.
I understand what trespass means.
I understand what private property means.
I understand biosecurity.
I understand that threatening or deliberately hurting another human being is a crime.
That isnât what Iâm questioning.
What I am questioning is something much more basic:
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE âPROPERTYâ BEHIND THE FENCE IS ALIVE, SENTIENT, FRIGHTENED AND SUFFERING?
Because thatâs where this whole argument changes for me.
An animal has a brain.
An animal experiences its environment.
Animals can experience pain, fear and distress.
They form relationships.
They communicate.
They learn.
Many cooperate with us.
Dogs rescue people.
Dogs detect disease.
Dogs assist people with disabilities.
Animals protect their young.
They form social groups.
They remember.
They want to get away from things that hurt them.
Not speaking our language does not make another living being stupid.
And being legally classified as someoneâs property does not magically switch off their capacity to suffer.
So after looking through these laws, I keep coming back to one question:
WHO ARE THESE LAWS ACTUALLY PROTECTING?
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đșđž AMERICA ACTUALLY PUT âTERRORISMâ INTO THE LAW
In the United States, Congress passed something in 2006 literally called the:
ANIMAL ENTERPRISE TERRORISM ACT
That is its actual name.
The legislation expanded federal law dealing with conduct intended to damage or interfere with an âanimal enterprise.â
The current US Code provision is now headed âForce, violence, and threats involving animal enterprises,â but the 2006 law that expanded it was explicitly called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.
And this did not happen in a vacuum.
Following September 11, 2001, the FBI dramatically strengthened its domestic counterterrorism capabilities.
By 2005, FBI testimony to Congress was discussing animal-rights and environmental extremists within its domestic terrorism work.
The FBI documented serious criminal acts including arson, sabotage, vandalism, theft of research animals and some explosive-device incidents.
Those are real crimes.
Iâm not defending bombing somebody.
Iâm not defending deliberately hurting people.
But hereâs what I find extraordinary.
The terrorism framework became attached to parts of the animal-rights movement because of criminal property destruction and economic disruption carried out by some participants.
That distinction matters enormously.
BECAUSE SAVING AN ANIMAL AND TERRORISING A HUMAN BEING ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
If somebody plants a bomb intending to hurt people, prosecute them.
If somebody threatens to murder somebody, prosecute them.
If somebody deliberately burns an occupied building, prosecute them.
But if somebody opens a cage because a living animal is suffering inside it?
Iâm sorry.
I refuse to pretend the moral question is exactly the same.
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đŠđș AND AUSTRALIA IS NOT INNOCENT HERE EITHER.
Australia doesnât have an identical federal âAnimal Enterprise Terrorism Act.â
But we have created our own agricultural-protection laws.
In 2019, the Australian Parliament passed amendments to the federal Criminal Code creating specific offences for using a carriage service â essentially things such as the internet or telecommunications â to intentionally incite trespass on agricultural land.
Another offence deals with inciting property damage or theft on agricultural land.
The maximum penalties considered by Parliament were 12 months imprisonment for the trespass-incitement offence and five years for the property offence.
And during the parliamentary inquiry, the Animal Defenders Office specifically warned that the legislation could potentially capture a situation where somebody used the internet to rally animal rescuers to a farm where animals were suffering.
They argued that it risked making organising the rescue of those animals a crime.
The Attorney-Generalâs Department responded that the law required intentional incitement to unlawful entry and would not capture accidental or inadvertent communications.
But think about the underlying situation.
Animals could be suffering.
People could know theyâre suffering.
Someone could organise others to enter and remove them.
And suddenly the legal conversation can become about:
Trespass.
Incitement.
Property.
Agricultural land.
But where did the suffering animal go in that conversation?
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QUEENSLAND â WHERE I LIVE
Queensland strengthened its approach after highly publicised farm invasions.
The Queensland Government announced in 2020 that convicted farm invaders could face significant fines or imprisonment.
Today, Queensland law specifically prohibits unlawfully entering or remaining on certain agricultural and animal-related premises.
The maximum penalty under some of those provisions can include 12 months imprisonment.
Governments talk about:
Biosecurity.
Business disruption.
Safety.
Animal welfare.
And yes â genuine biosecurity matters.
Nobody sensible wants someone carrying disease from one property into another.
But hereâs my problem:
BIOSECURITY MUST NEVER BECOME A CONVENIENT EXCUSE FOR SECRECY.
Thereâs a massive difference between:
âPlease follow disease-control procedures.â
and:
âYou are not allowed to see what happens behind this fence.â
Those arenât the same argument.
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NEW SOUTH WALES
NSW also strengthened farm-trespass laws.
Its legislation contains offences relating to aggravated unlawful entry on agricultural land, and NSW law has also addressed people directing or inciting others to unlawfully enter agricultural property.
Again:
We already had trespass laws.
We already had property-damage laws.
We already had theft laws.
So I think itâs perfectly reasonable to ask:
WHY DO AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES NEED THEIR OWN EXTRA LAYER OF PROTECTION FROM ACTIVISM?
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VICTORIA ACTUALLY PUT âANIMAL ACTIVISMâ IN THE NAME OF A LAW.
In 2022 Victoria passed:
LIVESTOCK MANAGEMENT AMENDMENT (ANIMAL ACTIVISM) ACT 2022
Again â thatâs not something Iâve invented.
Thatâs the legislationâs actual title.
And then we get to one Australian case that, for me, demonstrates exactly why this discussion matters.
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THE VICTORIAN PIGGERY CASE
In 2024 animal activists from the Farm Transparency Project entered the Midland Bacon piggery at Carag Carag and secretly installed cameras.
Those cameras recorded approximately 18 days of footage.
The footage reportedly showed industry practices including blunt-force killing of runt piglets, teeth clipping and tail docking.
But the cameras also allegedly recorded a man performing a sexual act on a pig.
The activists took the footage to police.
A man was subsequently charged with be******ty.
Then something extraordinary happened.
The legal argument became partly about whether the footage should even be admitted because the activists had obtained it unlawfully.
Now think about that.
Forget veganism for a moment.
Forget politics.
Just use common sense.
IF THOSE PEOPLE HAD NOT PUT THOSE CAMERAS INSIDE THAT FACILITY, WOULD THAT ALLEGED ACT HAVE EVER BEEN DISCOVERED?
Thatâs the question.
And it demonstrates why simply yelling âTRESPASS!â doesnât end the ethical discussion.
Sometimes the person breaking the rule is the reason society discovers something far worse happening behind the fence.
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âBUT THEY OWN THE ANIMAL.â
And this is where history should make us extremely uncomfortable.
Because humanity has heard versions of the property argument before.
In the United States under slavery, an enslaved human being could legally be considered property.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 strengthened the ability of enslavers to recover people who escaped.
And people who assisted an enslaved person to escape could themselves be fined and imprisoned.
Today we look back and understand something obvious:
THE LAW WAS WRONG.
A law being written down did not make slavery moral.
Ownership did not make suffering acceptable.
Helping someone escape being legally prohibited did not make slavery ethically correct.
I am not saying the historical experience of human slavery and modern animal agriculture are identical histories.
Iâm making a much simpler moral point:
PROPERTY LAW DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY SETTLE A QUESTION ABOUT SUFFERING.
If a living, sentient being is suffering, saying:
âBut somebody owns them.â
is not enough for me.
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IF I SMASH A WINDOW TO SAVE A DOG, WHAT AM I?
Imagine a dog is trapped in a vehicle on a dangerously hot day.
Somebody breaks the window and gets the dog out.
What is the story?
Is it:
âPerson destroys private property.â
Or:
âPerson saves dying dog.â
The same broken glass can be described completely differently depending on whether we recognise the life involved.
If a child is trapped in a burning room and somebody breaks down a door, nobody stands around crying about the door.
The life comes first.
So why does our moral reasoning become different when the sentient being behind the door is a pig?
A chicken?
A cow?
A sheep?
A laboratory dog?
A monkey?
A rabbit?
A horse?
Maybe the law still says somebody trespassed.
Fine.
Call the legal offence what it is.
But donât pretend that tells us everything about whether the act was morally right or wrong.
Sometimes another word belongs in the discussion:
RESCUE.
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âFARMERS LOVE THEIR ANIMALS.â
Iâm going to say something here that plenty of people wonât like.
I personally donât buy that argument.
If you love someone, I struggle with the idea that you breed them into existence, control their reproductive life, separate families, extract whatever economic value you can from their body and then send them to slaughter when it suits the business.
People can call that whatever they want.
I donât call it love.
And yes, farmers have choices.
We can grow food without raising sentient animals to kill them.
The fact that a system has existed for generations doesnât automatically make the system ethical.
Tradition isnât a moral argument.
Profit isnât a moral argument.
And âthis is how weâve always done itâ isnât one either.
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AND THEN WE HAVE ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION.
Hereâs another contradiction that fascinates me.
Weâre told:
Animals are sufficiently like us that experimenting on them can teach us something about human biology.
But when we talk about their suffering weâre suddenly told:
Theyâre not humans.
Theyâre different.
They donât deserve the same consideration.
Hang on.
Which is it?
If their nervous systems, organs, brains or biological processes are similar enough to make their suffering useful to us scientifically, surely that similarity should increase our ethical responsibility toward them â not decrease it.
And scientifically, animal models are not identical to humans.
Even major research organisations acknowledge the limitations of translating some animal-model findings into successful human treatments.
There is now increasing emphasis on human-based research technologies including:
Human cells.
Organoids.
Organ-on-chip systems.
Advanced computer modelling.
AI.
Human-specific biological systems.
Australiaâs own NHMRC requires researchers to consider the 3Rs:
Replacement of animals where possible.
Reduction in the numbers used.
Refinement to minimise harm.
Even our scientific system therefore recognises:
IF ANIMALS CAN BE REPLACED, THEY SHOULD BE.
To me the direction is obvious.
Use science to move forward.
Not to keep defending a system because itâs what weâve always done.
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THEN THEREâS ENTERTAINMENT.
This one makes me laugh because I actually tried bull riding a couple of times many years ago.
So I can say this having once participated in that culture myself.
The image is always the same:
The big tough cowboy.
The crowd.
The hat.
The horse.
The rope.
The performance.
But letâs remove the costume and look at whatâs actually happening.
A frightened young animal can be chased, roped and restrained while a crowd cheers.
Animals are deliberately made to buck.
We call it sport.
We call it entertainment.
We call the person doing it tough.
But who exactly has the power in that situation?
Humans invented the event.
Humans own the arena.
Humans control the animal.
Humans sell the tickets.
Humans award the prizes.
And the animal never volunteered.
That isnât courage to me.
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AND THEN THEREâS BULLFIGHTING.
Again:
Strip away the costumes.
Strip away the tradition.
Strip away the music.
Strip away the cheering crowd.
What remains?
An animal being deliberately injured and, in traditional forms of bullfighting, ultimately killed for entertainment.
Imagine doing that with a Labrador in the middle of an arena.
People would lose their minds.
So why does changing the species suddenly change our morality?
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AND HEREâS ONE OF THE BIGGEST CONTRADICTIONS OF ALL: THE RSPCA.
The RSPCA exists to prevent cruelty to animals.
Most Australians recognise that name immediately.
If someone reports a dog being neglected or cruelly treated, we expect animal welfare authorities to intervene.
Yet Australia also has the RSPCA Approved farming scheme.
The organisation certifies certain meat-chicken, pig, layer-hen and other animal-production systems as meeting higher welfare standards.
The RSPCAâs position is essentially that if animals are going to be farmed, their welfare should be improved and standards should go beyond the minimum legal requirements.
My position is different.
WHY ARE WE BREEDING AND KILLING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE WHEN WE DONâT HAVE TO?
How can we put an animal welfare organisationâs approval mark on products that ultimately require an animal to be killed?
That is a genuine ethical contradiction for me.
And I think people should be allowed to question it.
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TRANSPARENCY WOULD SOLVE A LOT OF THIS ARGUMENT.
Hereâs my proposal.
If what weâre doing to animals is acceptable:
SHOW IT.
Put cameras inside slaughterhouses.
Put cameras inside intensive farming facilities.
Have meaningful independent inspections.
Publish the results.
Protect genuine whistleblowers.
Show consumers how animals are raised.
Show consumers how theyâre transported.
Show consumers what happens when they reach slaughter.
Donât show a smiling cartoon cow standing in a green field on the packet if that isnât the animalâs reality.
Give people meaningful transparency.
I would go further personally.
I think if youâre buying the product, you should be able to know how that product was produced.
Because somewhere between the living animal and the plastic supermarket tray, something extraordinary happens:
THE ANIMAL DISAPPEARS.
It becomes:
âBeef.â
âPork.â
âBacon.â
âChicken.â
âLamb.â
We change the language and remove the individual.
Maybe if every consumer saw the entire process, they would make exactly the same decision.
Fine.
At least it would be an informed decision.
But if the process is so disturbing that we believe consumers shouldnât see it?
Then perhaps we need to question the process.
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THIS IS WHY I KEEP COMING BACK TO GREED AND SELFISHNESS.
These are my words.
My opinion.
After 65 years on this planet, looking at how humans treat animals, I think greed and selfishness explain an enormous amount of it.
We want the taste.
We want the convenience.
We want the money.
We want the entertainment.
We want the experiment.
We want the product.
We want the cheap meal.
And the animal pays the bill.
Then somebody climbs over the fence and shows us what is happening and somehow they become the problem.
Come on.
At some point weâve got to look at ourselves.
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BEING HUMAN DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MAKE US MORALLY SUPERIOR.
Iâve known dogs that, in my personal experience, display more loyalty, compassion and responsibility than plenty of humans Iâve met.
And I donât need a dog to speak English before I understand that the dog matters.
Intelligence isnât measured by whether another species can fill out our IQ test.
A dog doesnât need to understand Parliament.
A pig doesnât need to understand property law.
A cow doesnât need to understand economics.
A chicken doesnât need to understand religion.
They only need the capacity to experience what weâre doing to them.
CAN THEY SUFFER?
If the answer is yes, their suffering matters.
Thatâs enough for me.
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WATCH DOMINION BEFORE YOU DECIDE
Dominion is a 2018 Australian documentary produced by the Farm Transparency Project.
It uses drone footage, hidden cameras and handheld footage to document modern animal agriculture and also examines animals used for clothing, entertainment and research.
It is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Sia, Sadie Sink and Kat Von D.
This is not something I think people should simply take my word about.
WATCH IT YOURSELF.
Watch what happens to the animals.
Watch the conditions.
Watch the procedures.
Watch the slaughter.
Then ask yourself one simple question:
IF I CANNOT WATCH WHAT HAPPENS TO PRODUCE SOMETHING I BUY, WHY AM I COMFORTABLE PAYING SOMEBODY ELSE TO DO IT?
You donât have to agree with me before watching it.
In fact, Iâd rather you didnât.
Look at the evidence first.
Then decide for yourself.
â¶ïž Official Farm Transparency Project YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/farmtransparencyproject
đ Official Dominion watch page:
https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch
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THIS IS THE PART I WANT PEOPLE TO REMEMBER.
If someone deliberately creates suffering, that matters.
If someone tries to stop suffering, that matters too.
Those intentions are not morally identical.
A cage does not determine the value of the life inside it.
A fence doesnât make suffering acceptable.
A company registration doesnât remove sentience.
A farmâs balance sheet doesnât feel pain.
The animal does.
So perhaps instead of constantly asking:
âWHY DID THOSE ACTIVISTS GO INSIDE?â
we should occasionally have the courage to ask:
âWHAT WAS HAPPENING INSIDE THAT THEY THOUGHT WE NEEDED TO SEE?â
And if the answer makes us uncomfortable, maybe the activists arenât the only people we should be questioning.
Maybe the laws deserve scrutiny.
Maybe the industries deserve scrutiny.
Maybe our traditions deserve scrutiny.
And perhaps most uncomfortable of all:
MAYBE WE NEED TO SCRUTINISE OURSELVES.
Because for me this ultimately isnât about veganism.
It isnât about activists.
It isnât even about politics.
Itâs about something much simpler.
If another sentient being can suffer, what right do we have to cause that suffering unnecessarily?
And what sort of society punishes the person exposing suffering more enthusiastically than it questions the system causing it?
Thatâs why I think these laws are ridiculous.
Thatâs why I think the secrecy is wrong.
Thatâs why I think the word âterrorismâ should never be casually attached to rescuing or defending animals.
And thatâs why I will continue saying it:
PROTECTING A SENTIENT LIFE IS NOT SOMETHING WE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF.
Sometimes the cage is legal.
Sometimes opening it isnât.
That doesnât automatically tell us which side is morally right.
đ±đŸ
INSIDEOUT PLANT-BASED
This post is about questioning what weâve been taught, looking beyond marketing and tradition, and making our own decisions based on evidence, ethics and common sense.
đŹ SCIENCE & SOURCES:
Where scientific or factual claims are made, I aim to use credible research, official legislation, government sources and recognised scientific organisations. Sources can be provided and checked â donât just take my word for it.
đ€ AI TRANSPARENCY:
I use AI as a research, writing and creative tool to help investigate subjects, organise information, check sources and communicate my own thoughts and experiences more clearly. The opinions expressed are mine.
đ± Follow InsideOut Plant-Based on Facebook:
InsideOut Plant-Based
đ„ Watch Dominion:
https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch
â¶ïž Farm Transparency Project on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/c/farmtransparencyproject
Donât just believe what youâre told. Question it. Research it. Think for yourself.
