Delete videos of fast chickens, court orders Animal Defenders

You can also listen to the article in audio version.

The resolution of single judge Jan Montag is uncompromising. He ordered the defenders of animals (OBRAZ) to delete from their website, where they criticize the conditions for raising fast-growing chickens and especially against the Albert chain, all the photos and videos they secretly shot at the Trhový Štěpánov farm.

“For the purposes of the decision on a preliminary measure as part of the proportionality test, the court has preliminarily assessed that, in view of the possible significant consequences of the intervention, the right to protect the petitioner’s reputation must now be prioritized over the right to disseminate information,” reads the resolution, which is available to Seznam Zpravy .

The judge of the České Budějovice Regional Court granted the request of Rabbit, one of the largest suppliers of chicken meat.

“No comment,” commented Rabbit director Tomáš Fulín on the decision.

“It is not up to us to comment on the decision of an independent court that issued a decision at the initiative of a food company,” Albert’s spokesman Jiří Mareček told Seznam Zprávám.

Animal defenders do not like the court’s decision and filed an appeal against it to the High Court in Prague.

“We consider it a scandalous decision, censorship that has no parallel in the Czech Republic. However, we complied with the judgment and replaced the shots with other, comparable ones. The conditions of the chickens that are kept at these densities and with this growth rate look the same in all poultry farms,” ​​responded the rapid chicken campaign coordinator Radim Trojan to the court’s request to delete the photos and videos.

The judge further ordered Defenders of Animals to remove from the web presentation the word “disfigured”phrase: “in great suffering, miserable quality, injured, burned by own excrement”. Or whole sentences: “The worst for chickens. They suffocate in dark halls. They have burns. They are sick and suffering unimaginably.’

Furthermore, Animal Defenders must refrain from distributing flyers and remove those that are in publicly accessible places.

“It’s absolutely shocking that they forbid us to say that chickens have burns when they actually do. We only showed the truth and the breeders themselves confirmed that truth,” complains Radim Trojan. “Yet we have blacked out, replaced or deleted those words and phrases,” he adds.

The company Rabbit Trhový Štěpánov went to court because, according to them, Animal Defenders is spreading misleading, false and offensive claims in the campaign, and this is causing them considerable (and not only) reputational damage.

“It has been proven that the participant (PICTURE) without lawful reason interfered with the reputation and privacy of the petitioner by taking illegal video recordings without doing so for scientific, artistic or news purposes. From the content of the submitted materials, it does not appear that the participant (IMAGE) had a legitimate reason for his actions,” writes single judge Jan Montag in the justification.

“In the proceedings on the merits, the court will then examine whether the intervention affected the petitioner’s reputation in economic competition, whether it is true information, submitted in such a way that it distorts the fact, whether the participant’s intervention exceeded a certain permissible intensity to the extent that already in democratic companies cannot be tolerated, or whether the petitioner must endure a higher level of criticism,” the resolution reads.

Animal defenders intend to continue the campaign.

“Now, however, we intend to call on the public to oppose censorship as well. People have a right to know the truth about the lives of the chickens that Albert is selling them,” reports Radim Trojan.