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The animal rights group Animal Recovery Mission (ARM) has just released the first-ever cruelty investigation into a United States organic dairy farm.
ARM’s investigative team compiled footage between March and July 2019 from Natural Prairie Dairy in Channing, Texas. Natural Prairie Dairy is the largest organic dairy farm in the United States, housing more than 25,000 cows across its four locations. During the four-month investigation, an ARM investigator witnessed cows being stabbed with screwdrivers, kicked, and dragged when they were too weak to stand.
Over and over throughout their lives, the animals were violently artificially inseminated. In the video, a mother cow attempts to flee a worker while her baby is halfway born. As soon as the baby drops to the ground, a worker roughly grabs her, separating the seconds-old calf from her mother for life. Cows suffering from infections and lameness sometimes wouldn’t eat and were painfully force-fed through long tubes.
Management fired the undercover investigator after photos of animal abuse turned up on his cellphone. While the company attempted to delete the photos, ARM already had plenty of documentation to submit to the Hartley County Sheriff’s Office for review.
On their website, Natural Prairie Dairy claims that a “sustainable farm ecosystem” means giving their cows “the very best care.” But according to ARM, cows not being milked spent their lives in illegally overcrowded barns on feces-covered cement floors.
This horrific video is the third of three recently released as part of the largest dairy investigation of all time into Fairlife and Select Milk Producers Inc. The first video, captured on surveillance equipment by an investigator at Fair Oaks Farms, one of the largest dairies in the United States, reveals the normal daily routine of workers and managers. The investigator assisted in bottle-feeding newborn calves, loading transport trucks, and disposing of the dead. He described his findings as “by far the worst abuse to baby animals” that he had seen “in any investigation in the world.”
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