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Fair Oaks Farms Apologizes After Video Surfaces Of Workers Abusing Calves; 4 Employees Fired
 [CHICAGO.CBSLOCAL] The owners of an Indiana dairy farm are apologizing after undercover video released by an animal rights group showed workers kicking, beating and throwing around newborn calves.The video was filmed at Fair Oaks Farms, a popular destination for school field trips and tourists about 75 miles southeast of reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ... home of Al Capone, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel,... The video was filmed by a member of Animal Recovery Mission, which had an undercover investigator get a job at Fair Oaks Farms from August to November of last year in order to expose animal cruelty. The footage shows workers dragging calves by their ears, including off the side of a farm cart, throwing calves into small plastic isolation hutches, hitting calves with milk bottles, kicking calves, beating them with branding irons and steel rebar, and force-feeding the animals to the point they can’t breathe. Workers are also seen piling dead calves onto farm vehicles and throwing them in mass dump sites. The video also shows filthy conditions in the calves’ pens, overcrowded transport trucks, and temperature readings of more than 100 inside their hutches. Animal Recovery Mission claims supervisors and owners at Fair Oaks were aware of and even took part in the animal abuse. Jewel-Osco said the grocery store chain is removing all Fairlife products from its shelves in response to the video. Fairlife is owned by Fair Oaks founder Mike McCloskey and gets its dairy from Fair Oaks Farms. "At Jewel-Osco we strive to maintain high animal welfare standards across all areas of our business and work in partnership with our vendors to ensure those standards are upheld. We apologize for any inconvenience," spokeswoman Mary La Belle Frances Trucco stated in an email. In a statement, Fair Oaks Farms said five individuals were identified from the video, four of them Fair Oaks employees and the fifth a third-party truck driver who was picking up calves. The company said three of the four employees were fired before the video was released after co-workers caught them abusing animals and reported them to management. The fourth was fired on Tuesday after the ARM video was released. As for the truck driver, Fair Oaks said he will not be allowed on their farms again. "I am disgusted by and take full responsibility for the actions seen in the footage, as it goes against everything that we stand for in regards to responsible cow care and comfort. The employees featured in the video exercised a complete and total disregard for the documented training that all employees go through to ensure the comfort, safety and well-being of our animals," Fair Oaks founder Mike McCloskey stated. Posted by: Fred 2019-06-07 |
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