A Trump administration rule could stop a powerful tool for exposing animal cruelty
Vox · L · trust 41/100
Drones can peer into secretive factory farms. A proposed FAA ban could make this illegal.
Gift Hundreds of cows at Coronado Dairy in Arizona walk en masse into a milking facility as others exit. Ram Daya/We Animals Kenny Torrella is a senior reporter for Vox’s Future Perfect section, with a focus on animal welfare and the future of meat. In February, an animal rights group flew a drone over a farm in California that raises calves destined for dairies and cattle ranches. Double D Dairies, the company that owns the farm, is linked to a prominent milk brand that highlights its humane farming practices. But the drone documented a very different reality.
In one part of the drone video, filmed by the group Direct Action Everywhere, employees can be seen kicking calves in the face. In another, they grind hot irons into calves’ skulls, apparently without anesthetics, causing some to thrash and collapse (this procedure is done to prevent horn growth). Many calves were confined in tiny crates .
The ranch fired one of the employees after the investigation was published in the Los Angeles Times . “Animal welfare and safety are incredibly important to us, and we have a zero-tolerance policy for any mistreatment,” the owner wrote to the LA Times over email. When Vox reached the owner for an interview, he declined to comment.
This sort of treatment of farmed animals, it turns out, is far from unusual. Many investigations into the milk and beef industries — along with other livestock sectors — have uncovered similar abuses .
But without drone footage, we probably wouldn’t know about many of them. Drones flown by animal advocates have also captured enormous hog manure pits overflowing during a hurricane, millions of egg-laying hens culled amidst a bird flu outbreak, and a large egg farm that falsely claimed to let its hens roam free when it didn’t.
Over the past decade, as drones have become more affordable and easier to operate, they have become an essential — and impactful — tool for exposing wrongdoing at the factory farms that collectively house billions of animals in the US. But a recently proposed rule by the Trump administration could cut off such drone-powered documentation, making the mere search for this type of animal cruelty illegal — and a huge, largely hidden industry all the more impenetrable. It could also take out eyes in the sky that add visibility into countless other massive industries and facilities across the US.
There are more than 800,000 registered drones in the US, and whether people fly them for fun or for business, they have to follow some basic rules. They must keep them below 400 feet, for example, and avoid flying them near sensitive places like airports, military bases, and federal prisons.
But the types of facilities that are off-limits for unauthorized drone flight could soon balloon to also include a much broader range of places, such as data centers, banks, and wastewater facilities, along with farms and slaughterhouses.
A decade ago, Congress directed the Federal Aviation Administration to develop a system in which businesses deemed vital to US economic and national security could request drone flight restrictions over their property. And in May, the FAA proposed a new rule to do just that.
The public has until Thursday, August 6 to submit comments to the Federal Aviation Administration before it finalizes the rule.
The rule would allow facilities in 16 vaguely defined sectors considered “critical infrastructure” to request drone restrictions, including everything from “financial services;” to “information technology;” to “food and agriculture;” and, broadly, “commercial.”
The likelihood of the proposed rule becoming regulation as it’s currently drafted is unclear, though getting it done is a priority for the Trump administration. In June 2025, the White House issued an executive order calling for the FAA to “promulgate a final rule as soon as practicable.”
The meat industry says the potential new rule would help to protect America’s food supply. They say that, in theory, drones could pose a biosecurity risk; they worry that drone operators could intentionally or inadvertently spread disease from farm to farm. Other objections include the possibility that these small aircraft might distress the animals or that people could spy on farms and gather proprietary information on farm technologies and production practices.
But in its comments to the FAA lies another motivation from these industries: making it harder for activists to document what happens on farms.
“Activists have been deploying drones against animal agriculture, and against hog operations specifically, for well over a decade,” the National Pork Producers Council wrote in a comment to the FAA.
“Poultry operations, in particular, have been targeted by outside groups using drones to capture aerial footage for activist campaigns,” the North Carolina Poultry Federation wrote .
For decades, activists have gone undercover to work at farms and slaughterhouses and covertly film and expose animal cruelty on the ground. Their footage has given millions of Americans a peek into the US meat, milk, and egg industries and has occasionally led to criminal animal cruelty charges, boycotts, and legislative action. Eventually, the industry fought back.
In the 2010s, lawmakers allied with the meat industry proposed bills in around 25 states to make such investigations illegal, and several were passed into law. Critics called them “ag-gag” laws , describing how they gag activists and journalists from exposing animal cruelty and environmental pollution in the agricultural sector. And while a few were struck down in the courts as unconstitutional , several still stand.
In the wake of this investigative crackdown, animal advocates increasingly turned to drones over the past decade to conduct their investigations. It didn’t take long for several heavily agricultural states — including Iowa , Texas , and Kentucky…
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