A concerning bill is moving through the Florida legislature that would make it legally and financially jeopardizing to publicly criticize agricultural products and practices. While it may seem, on the surface, like an attempt to protect farmers from defamation, this provision could serve more as a tool to silence the public from speaking out about environmental concerns.
Hunters, anglers, and conservationists have relied on raising their unified voices for years to protect public lands, wildlife, and waterways. This legislation threatens our ability to do so.
Libel Legality
Buried deep inside a farm bill omnibus package in SB 290/HB 433 is a provision that expands on Florida’s existing food libel law to cover non-perishable foods, along with agricultural practices, and adds on one-way attorney fees.
Food libel laws exist in 13 states and vary by state, but they essentially allow a food producer, processor, manufacturer, or distributor to sue individuals or groups who make disparaging statements about their food products. They are similar to general defamation laws, but these statutes tend to require a lower burden of proof for the food producer, making it typically easier for them to win a lawsuit against the person or entity making statements about their products.
These libel laws have been criticized as unconstitutional for infringing on free speech. Libel law cases are often considered strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs. In other words, the intent of said lawsuits is to silence those speaking out and intimidate others from engaging in similar rhetoric.
So while Florida has had a food libel law in place since 1994, it only encompassed perishable foods. This new provision adds non-perishables as well as agricultural practices.
This means that if you were to make an Instagram post criticizing the use of glyphosate on crops in Florida, you could be hit with a lawsuit where you (the defendant in this scenario) could be on the hook for hundreds of thousands to even millions of dollars in legal fees, depending on the size of the lawsuit.
This is because the provision also changes the law to award one-way attorney’s fees to a winning plaintiff (e.g., a food producer) but not to a successful defendant. This is a departure from the standard “American Rule,” under which each party bears its own fees unless a statute or contract states otherwise.
This leaves the public with two poor choices: stay quiet with your concerns or risk advocacy for legal battles and financial stress.
Environmental Implications
Captains for Clean Water (CFCW) is a nonprofit organization started in 2016 by fishing guides who had had enough with Florida’s poor water management practices. They’re no strangers to raising their voices and sounding the alarm when Florida’s waters are at risk. CFCW co-founders Capt. Daniel Andrews and Capt. Chris Wittman took some time (on their way to Tallahassee to speak out against this provision) to talk with MeatEater about the vast implications its passage could have.
Because this provision includes “agricultural practices,” fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide use could not be publicly criticized, along with water management and other production practices. These practices can directly impact Florida water quality, fuel harmful algal blooms, and endanger the well-being of fisheries and coastal communities.
CFCW has been standing toe to toe with “big sugar,” one of the state’s largest and most powerful lobbying forces in the Florida Capitol, for years. The sugar industry has been tied to deadly red tide algal blooms in Florida’s waters due to discharges from Lake Okeechobee. But the first study to confirm this connection was released in 2022, four years after a deadly bloom occurred in 2018.
“When you have a status quo, these canary-in-the-coalmine voices are critical. Their jobs in society are to make a big, major shifts, not to be precisely accurate on small things. This bill is designed to protect the status quo,” Capt. Andrews said. “It’s designed to make it impossible, or legally threatening, to simply state an observation when something is wrong and needs addressing. This bill would force individuals and organizations to always speak with laboratory-grade precision, which is simply not possible.”
National Ramifications
“The broader nationwide implications of this bill are chilling. Could something like this be used to muzzle conservation advocacy in other places? Count me as concerned and watching closely,” said MeatEater’s Director of Conservation, Mark Kenyon.
This provision sets a legal precedent that could very easily be copied and pasted across various industries to deter the public from speaking out against issues such as pollution, land use, habitat loss, and water mismanagement affecting public lands and waters. Hunters, anglers, and other outdoor recreationists are often the first folks to witness unchecked environmental harm. And sounding the alarm about an issue early often means that not much information has been collected (i.e., you wouldn’t have a strong case in court).
“If you look at the Pebble Mine, for example. You don’t need to cite a scientific study to understand that if you introduce large-scale mining to Bristol Bay, it’s going to have crippling, damaging effects on that ecosystem,” Capt. Wittman pointed out. If a provision like this were in place protecting mining practices, all the sportsmen who spoke out against it would be on the hook for a lawsuit.
Studies take time to be conducted. Data slowly trickles in. But those initial boots-on-the-ground discoveries or voices of concern are often the catalyst to set investigations in motion. This provision prevents the public from raising valid concerns. It punishes public input rather than welcoming open conversation.
“Watching what happened on the national stage last year with the potential proposed sell off of public lands—you had the entire outdoor community, every angler and hunter in America was just completely outraged by this proposal to sell our public lands, and they used one tool in the toolbox to successfully get that removed—that was their voice,” Capt. Andrews said on a recent episode of the Captains for Clean Water Podcast.
While this issue is currently local to Florida, it could easily become a legal playbook for other industries, such as mining or data centers. “If this happens in the Free State of Florida, and that first domino falls, you can bet that same model is going to ripple across the country,” Capt. Wittman said. “This should be concerning, not just to people in Florida who this would impact immediately, but every single American who leverages their voice against powerful corporations.”
Capt. Andrews explained conservation issues as a constant tug-of-war between outdoorsmen and special-interest groups that have lobbyists, lawyers, and endless means at their disposal to succeed. They pull, but we have to pull harder. “View this fight and every conservation fight as a unifying opportunity,” he said. “Regardless of whether the issue is of interest or local to you, when it has national implications like this, you’ve got to saddle up and pull.”
“Look at the Constitution and respect the foresight of our Founding Fathers,” Capt. Andrews said. “When you start challenging any of the amendments, there are some dangerous things that can start to happen. The First Amendment is so important to our organization and to the outdoor community as a whole. Without our voice, we have nothing.”
This bill is being heard in a House subcommittee on Wednesday, Feb 4 at 1:30 EST, but the bill and specifically this provision could be up for debate until the end of the legislative session on March 13. Click here to take action now.
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