An undercover video taken by activists at a New Mexico dairy has triggered a New Mexico Livestock Board investigation into practices there, after the farm shut down operations in September, according to a CBS News report.
The video, published Sept. 16 by animal-rights group Mercy For Animals, shows workers at the Winchester Dairy near Dexter, New Mexico, kicking, punching, whipping and shocking cows, and using a front-end loader to drag a downed cow and push it into a trailer. It also shows workers using chains to deliver a dead calf. The video claims that the cow died and shows her being dragged away by the front-end loader.
The dairy said in a statement that it had fired all employees and referred abusive workers to law enforcement. The dairy also relocated all of its cows and ceased operations. The New Mexico Livestock Board announced its investigation on Sept. 17, after the dairy's statement was published.
Slice of Cruelty, the Mercy for Animals website publishing the video, called on Winchester Dairy customer Leprino Foods to implement "desperately needed animal welfare standards and enforcement oversight," and asked viewers to boycott Leprino customers such as Pizza Hut, Domino's and Papa John's. Denver-based Leprino supplies cheese to those companies.
The day after the video was published, Leprino announced in a statement that it had terminated all shipments from Winchester.
Animal welfare expert Temple Grandin said that the practices in the video were "definitely abusive" and that the blame could spread from the fired workers to the farm's management for failure to provide proper training and equipment, according to Food Safety News. Grandin has previously taken part in Center for Food Integrity's Animal Care Review Panel, which reviews undercover videos to determine if actual abuse occurred.
Mercy for Animals was previously involved in opposition to the passage of "ag gag" laws in Utah, Iowa, Missouri and Idaho that would have made this sort of filming illegal. Idaho's law is currently the subject of a lawsuit by a number of organizations, but not Mercy for Animals. The case is currently pending trial. PD
—Summarized by Progressive Dairyman staff from cited sources
Previous coverage of undercover videos by Progressive Dairyman:
