New MFA Investigation: Ohio Dairy Farm Brutality

Related media coverage

"Chilling undercover footage recorded during a new Mercy For Animals investigation exposes dairy farm workers sadistically abusing cows and young calves."

Captured on hidden camera, the shocking scenes of abuse reveal a culture of cruelty at Conklin Dairy Farms in Plain City, Ohio. During a four-week investigation between April and May, MFA's investigator documented farm workers:

• Violently punching young calves in the face, body slamming them to the ground, and pulling and throwing them by their ears
• Routinely using pitchforks to stab cows in the face, legs and stomach
• Kicking "downed" cows (those too injured to stand) in the face and neck - abuse carried out and encouraged by the farm's owner
• Maliciously beating restrained cows in the face with crowbars - some attacks involving over 40 blows to the head
• Twisting cows' tails until the bones snapped
• Punching cows' udders
• Bragging about stabbing, dragging, shooting, breaking bones, and beating cows and calves to death

After viewing the footage, Dr. Bernard Rollin, distinguished professor of animal science at Colorado State University, stated: "This is probably the most gratuitous, sustained, sadistic animal abuse I have ever seen. The video depicts calculated, deliberate cruelty, based not on momentary rage but on taking pleasure through causing pain to cows and calves who are defenseless."

Immediately upon completion of the investigation, Mercy For Animals contacted the City Prosecutor's Office of Marysville regarding the ongoing pattern of abuse at Conklin Dairy Farms. MFA is pushing for employees of the facility to be criminally prosecuted for violating Ohio's animal cruelty laws.

The deplorable conditions uncovered at Conklin Dairy Farms highlight the reality that animal agriculture is incapable of self-regulation and that meaningful federal and state laws must be implemented and strengthened to prevent egregious cruelty to farmed animals.

Although many of the abuses documented at Conklin Dairy Farms are sadistic in nature, numerous MFA undercover investigations at dairy farms, pig farms, egg farms, hatcheries and slaughterhouses have revealed that violence and abuse to farmed animals - whether malicious or institutionalized - runs rampant nationwide.

Compassionate consumers can end their direct financial support of farmed animal abuse by rejecting dairy, and other animal products, and adopting a vegan diet.

Willet Dairy Investigation by Mercy For Animals

Investigation released to the public on 26 January 2010

Far from leading the carefree lives portrayed in the dairy industry's "happy cow" commercials, the vast majority of cows used for dairy production today lead lives of deprivation, confinement, painful mutilations and cruel handling. These curious and intelligent animals are denied access to open pasture and treated as mere milk-producing machines - forced to live on manure-coated concrete floors in overcrowded sheds.

A new Mercy For Animals investigation is pulling back the curtains on the largest dairy factory farm in New York State – Willet Dairy in Locke. In early 2009 an MFA undercover investigator worked at the mega-dairy, secretly documenting egregious acts of animal cruelty, including neglect, with a hidden camera.

Evidence gathered during the investigation reveals:

• Cows with bloody open wounds, prolapsed uteruses, pus-filled infections, and swollen joints, apparently left to suffer without veterinary care
• "Downed" cows – those too sick or injured to even stand – left to suffer for weeks before dying or being killed
• Workers hitting, kicking, punching, and electric-shocking cows and calves
• Calves having their horns burned off without painkillers, as a worker shoved his fingers into the calves' eyes to restrain them
• Calves having their tails cut off - a painful practice opposed by the American Veterinary Medical Association
• Newborn calves forcibly dragged away from their mothers by their legs, causing emotional distress to both mother and calf
• Cows living in overcrowded sheds on manure-coated concrete flooring
• Workers injecting cows with a controversial bovine growth hormone, used to increase milk production

In a joint statement, internationally renowned experts, including Dr. Bernard Rollin, an expert witness on animal welfare issues in the U.S. and abroad, and Dr. Temple Grandin, a world-renowned cattle welfare expert and advisor to the USDA, compared the conditions documented at Willet to the infamous Hallmark slaughterhouse, where undercover video exposing abuse of downed cows resulted in the largest beef recall in US history. They state, "This dairy presents at least as bad a picture of the industry as does Hallmark."

New York veterinarian, Dr. Holly Cheever, bluntly stated, "[I]t is my professional opinion that the environment that this dairy provides as well as its cattle-handling techniques are improper, unhygienic, dangerous, and inhumane."

Despite the overwhelming evidence that the dairy operation repeatedly violated New York's animal cruelty laws, which was meticulously compiled by Mercy For Animals and presented to the Cayuga County District Attorney, the law enforcement agency refuses to uphold the state's laws to protect animals - allowing abuse to continue at Willet, unchecked.

Sadly, the inhumane conditions uncovered at this factory farm are not isolated. Whether raised for meat, dairy or eggs, animals used in food production are frequently subjected to appalling confinement, mutilations, brutal handling and slaughter. Because agribusiness values profit over ethical principles, cruelty to animals continues to run rampant on factory farms.

Thankfully, compassionate consumers can choose to withdraw their support of these abusive industries by adopting a vegan diet. Each time we eat we can choose kindness over cruelty.

Media coverage:

Los Angeles Times

ABC News

ABC News - Blog

Syracuse.com

This Dish Is Vegetarian

Food Consumer

Yahoo
Huffington Post

Forbes.com

New York Times

Video:

UPDATE RELEASED BY EMAIL ON 04 FEBRUARY 2010

Dear Friend,

There has been some major fall-out from Mercy For Animals' New York dairy farm investigation that could change state law, prevent cruelty to thousands of animals and open the hearts and minds of millions of Americans to the plight of dairy cows!

After reviewing MFA's investigation, New York State Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal proposed a ban on tail docking - A.09732 - similar to one that was enacted in California last year.

Tail docking, which involves cutting off the ends of calves' tails - severing through sensitive skin, nerves and bone without any painkillers - is among the most disturbing practices MFA's undercover investigator captured on film at Willet Dairy - New York's largest dairy mega-farm.

Although the American Veterinary Medical Association condemns tail docking as painful and unnecesary and cutting off the tails of horses has been illegal in New York for decades, it remains common practice in the dairy industry.

MFA's release of cruelty footage at Willet Dairy has also led to Leprino Foods, a Denver-based cheese producer, dropping Willet as a milk supplier. Leprino distributes cheese to the three largest pizza companies in the United States - Pizza Hut, Dominos and Papa John's.

Perhaps most importantly, this investigation has brought to light the issue of animal cruelty within the dairy industry to millions of Americans for the first time.

Shocking images of inhumane dairy industry practices have aired on ABC's World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer and Nightline, CNN, and hundreds of newspapers, radio and television news networks from coast-to-coast featured the investigation, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and Forbes.

The extensive media coverage has prompted many consumers to ditch dairy - boycotting the cruelty inflicted upon dairy cows.

Country View Family Farms – Pennsylvania, 2009

"A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation reveals unconscionable cruelty to mother pigs and their young piglets at a Hatfield Quality Meat supplier - "Country View Family Farms," in Fannettsburg, Pennsylvania. The hidden camera video provides consumers with a jarring glimpse into the nightmarish world of factory pork production.

MFA's investigation uncovered:

Workers grabbing piglets by their fragile ears or legs and throwing them across the room and slamming them into transport carts.

Workers tattooing sows by repeatedly driving sharp metal spikes into their flesh.

Sows with untreated rectal prolapses and deep, infected sores and scrapes from constant rubbing against the bars of their stalls.

Workers cutting off piglets' tails with dull pliers and castrating them by ripping out their testes with their bare hands - all without anesthesia.

Thousands of pregnant pigs confined in two-feet wide metal stalls so small that they could only take one step forward or backward and could not turn around or lie down comfortably.

Injured, sick and runt piglets being tossed into overcrowded gassing kill carts, slowly suffocating from CO2.

Workers firing steel rods into sows' heads, sometimes as many as four separate times, before the sows fell and died.

Numerous veterinarians and animal welfare experts have harshly condemned the conditions documented at this "family farm" - which confines nearly 3,000 breeding sows. Dr. Nedim C. Buyukmihci, Emeritus Professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, asserts, "I can state unequivocally that the pigs in this facility suffered immensely...These people showed complete disregard for the welfare or well-being on the pigs."

The findings of MFA's newest investigation are consistent with those documented at pig farms across the country in recent years - illustrating that animal neglect and abuse are the pork industry norm, not the exception.

Not only are the abuses documented at this facility standard within the industry, they are legal in the state of Pennsylvania. Like most states, Pennsylvania's anti-cruelty statute exempts farmed animals from legal protection. Pigs, like all farmed animals, also lack federal protection during their lives confined on factory farms.

As consumers we can choose compassion over cruelty at every meal. Adopting a compassionate vegan diet is the most powerful action we can take to put an end to needless animal suffering and the conditions documented during this investigation.