Hidden video shows Ohio cows beaten
By Meghan Barr
Posted May 26, 2010 @ 12:36 AM
CLEVELAND —
An animal welfare group said Tuesday that a graphic video it secretly recorded shows workers at a dairy farm beating cows with crowbars, stabbing them with pitchforks and punching them in their heads.The video was recorded in an undercover investigation at Conklin Dairy Farms Inc., said Mercy For Animals, a not-for-profit group that publicizes what it calls cruel practices in the dairy, meat and egg industries and promotes a vegan diet.
The video shows workers holding down newborn calves and stomping on their heads. It shows one worker wiring a cow's nose to a metal bar near the ground and repeatedly beating it with another bar while it bleeds.
Conklin Dairy Farms, a fourth-generation family operation based in Plain City, said it takes the care of its cows and calves very seriously and had reviewed the video.
"The video shows animal care that is clearly inconsistent with the high standards we set for our farm and its workers, and we find the specific mistreatment shown on the video to be reprehensible and unacceptable," Gary Conklin, of Conklin Dairy Cattle Sales LLC, said Tuesday night in an e-mailed statement. "We will not condone animal abuse on our farm."
The company said it would interview its farm workers and anyone found to have willfully abused the cows or calves would be fired.
Last year, Mercy For Animals, which is based in Chicago, released a video showing workers at an Iowa egg hatchery tossing male chicks into a grinder. Industry groups said such instantaneous euthanasia was a common practice because male chicks can't lay eggs or be raised quickly enough to be sold for meat.
Mercy For Animals' executive director, Nathan Runkle, said the cow video was shot between April 28 and Sunday by an undercover worker at the dairy, about 25 miles northwest of Columbus. He said the documented abuse violates Ohio's anti-animal cruelty statute.
The group presented the video and the evidence it collected to the prosecutor's office in Marysville. The prosecutor's office didn't respond to a request for comment late Tuesday.
http://www.mercyforanimals.org/ohdairy/
http://www.mercyforanimals.org/
http://www.cantonrep.com/newsnow/x289837620/Hidden-video-shows-Ohio-cows-beaten
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This group is in favor of vegetarianism and I myself have no interest in a world full of only soybeans and humans. I also understand why some farmers may be wary of suburban and city do-gooders who have no idea of the needs and practical care of thousand-pound-plus animals.
It is NOT an "undercover video". The perp is quite aware that he is being filmed; in several places he positions himself to give a better camera shot of what he is doing.
Farmers are businessmen. You don't treat your means of production like that, nor do you tolerate such treatment by your employees. Aside from being unnecessary cruelty, it's not in their own best interest.
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