The meat industry isn't a person, it's an industry. It shouldn't be able to hide practices that endanger human health and safety. This isn't a privacy issue, this is about protecting the ability of whistleblowers to speak out.

Devil's advocate from the other side: commercial farming and animal slaughter is a messy, ugly business to a lot of people. You could easily film an ethical operation and edit in such a way that people are shocked (shocked!!) that their steaks had eyes and felt pain.

So even without "human health and safety concerns", there are valid reasons for not showing graphic details.

That said, I absolutely think enforcing ethical animal treatment through public pressure on factory farming trumps right-not-to-know.

None of those arguments really wash. If an industry depends on hiding its typical (or even exemplary!) operations from the general public, because of fear that people might not buy the industry's products if they knew what was involved in its production, that only builds the case for making sure the public knows what's going on. That reaction is basically proof that something the public is interested in, is being hidden.

The public interest absolutely trumps some sort of business-model protection. In fact the only exclusions I can think of to that involve trade secrets provisions, but typically there IIRC there are fairly narrow definitions of what can be protected.

If people aren’t comfortable watching animals being slaughtered maybe they shouldn’t eat them.

I'm not comfortable watching people changing adult diapers, but I'll visit a nursing home.

I'm not comfortable watching people be killed, but I'll celebrate American Independence Day.

I'm not comfortable with watching surgery, but I'll undergo surgery.

There are loads of things I benefit from that I don't enjoy watching.

EDIT: FYI, I have butchered pigs, chickens, and rabbits.

Would you undergo surgery if there was a more comfortable option with equivalent or better results?

Yes.

People should know how the meat industry works but this reasoning seems extreme.

I am not comfortable watching women give birth, that doesn't mean I shouldn't have children.

I think this is confusing the availability of video with the forced viewing of video.

If you're not comfortable watching a woman give birth, you can choose to avoid the many thousands of available videos. You don't have that option with factory farming methods.

Nobody wants to watch animals being slaughtered on an assembly line, but they should absolutely have the option to see what happens with their food. I don't think there's any moral room for "It would be disgusting and probably harm their business, so we shouldn't film it."

There might be a frequency issue here ;)

I believe exacerbating information asymmetry about exchange goods and services is anathema to free exchange goods and services.

I understand my comment was ambiguous; I meant that this was an appropriate time to say that if the industry has nothing to hide it has nothing to fear.

> The meat industry isn't a person, it's an industry

I don't know what that means. "Industry" is people doing the same thing. Doesn't matter if it's one software programmer or one farmer or a bunch of them.

There are few people outside the health care system who will not be traumatised by watching a surgery.

There are few people outside abbatoirs (or indeed inside them) who can watch animals being slaughtered and butchered without emotional trauma.

Sometimes things are hidden from us to protect us from harm.