Messing with Missouri livestock shipments will soon cost you

Missouri is set to soon criminalize people if they interfere with the shipping of livestock. 

A bill on track to become law next month boosts the penalty from a misdemeanor to a felony. 

Missouri Department of Agriculture Director Chris Chinn says the new law will be important:  “The processing facilities, what they have seen happen in the past is animal rights activist groups will throw liquids or objects into the trailers of those animals. But what happens is that the whole load gets condemned at that time. And so, the farmer who shipped those animals is now not going to get paid for them,” she says.

St. Joseph Republican Representative Brenda Shields sponsored the bill.