As COVID raged across northern California in March 2020, a pair of farm industry groups were worried about a different threat: animal rights activists.

Citing an FBI memo warning that activists trespassing on factory farms could spread a viral bird disease, the groups wrote a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom to argue that their longtime antagonists were more than a nuisance. They were potentially terrorists threatening the entire food chain.

“The safety of our food supply has never been more critical, and we must work together to prevent these clear threats of domestic terrorism from being realized,” the groups wrote.

A coalition of transparency and animal rights groups on Monday released that letter, along with a cache of government documents, to highlight the tight links between law enforcement and agriculture industry groups.

Activists say those documents show an unseemly relationship between the FBI and Big Ag. The government–industry fearmongering has accelerated with the spread of bird flu enabled by the industry’s own practices, they say.

The executive director of Property of the People, the nonprofit that obtained the documents via public records requests, said in a statement that the documents paint a damning picture.

“Transparency is not terrorism, and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.”

“Factory farms are a nightmare for animals and public health. Yet, big ag lobbyists and their FBI allies are colluding to conceal this cruelty and rampant disease by shifting blame to the very activists working to alert the public,” Ryan Shapiro said. “Transparency is not terrorism, and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.”

Industry groups did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, the FBI defended its relationship with “members of the private sector.”

“Our goal is to protect our communities from unlawful activity while at the same time upholding the Constitution,” the agency said in an unsigned statement. “The FBI focuses on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”

A Federal Focus

The dozens of documents trace the industry’s relationship with law enforcement agencies over a period stretching from 2015, during James Comey’s tenure as FBI director, to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the more recent outbreak of bird flu, also known as avian influenza.

Animal rights activists have long said that federal law enforcement seems determined to put........

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