Second dairy accused of abuse
Animal rights group’s video shows harsh milking procedures, cramped pens
A second Florida dairy that supplies Publix was accused of severely abusing cows, with the release of an undercover video that appears to show cows being beaten, whipped and forced to live in appalling conditions at Burnham Dairy Farm in Okeechobee County.
Taken by an undercover investigator for an animal rights group, the video shows what the organization described as a harsh regime designed to maximize milk production. The cows, some sick and others slipping and falling on the slick floors, are hustled into milking stalls. Sick cows were dragged by tractor to what’s called the downer area, they said, where they were allowed to die without veterinary care.
“The cows are living in extreme misery,” Richard
Couto, founder and lead investigator for Animal Recovery Mission, which last week released a video showing the abuse of cows at a different dairy, said at a news conference Thursday morning in Deerfield Beach. “It is a torturous, torturous operation.”
The video was shot from August to October by the organization’s undercover investigator, who was not named but who was described as an Army combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq.
“The animals’ living quarters are horrific,” Couto said. “They are littered with feces. In some of the barns the cows are stepping in up to 4 inches of manure, 24 hours a day. To get them out of the holding areas, they’re beaten, they’re whipped, they’re tormented, they’re yelled at. To get them up the ramp, they’re beaten, they’re whipped, they’re tormented. To get them into the milking, they’re beaten, they’re tormented, they’re whipped.”
Publix announced it has suspended deliveries from the dairy. A trade association has put the dairy on probation.
But the Florida Department of Agriculture found only minor problems in the course of an inspection last week in response to a complaint from the animal rights group. The department’s inspectors found the dairy, which had about 1,175 cows, to be clean and well-maintained, without any neglected animals or exposed carcasses.
According to the report, owner Randy Burnham said the dairy farm experienced an increase in cow deaths in recent months because of Hurricane Irma and other storms with heavy rain, leading cows to give birth early and increasing calf mortality. He said that made it difficult to dispose of carcasses immediately.
But Couto said it’s likely the farm cleaned up recently in response to the complaints his organization made with more than a dozen government agencies. He said his investigator produced about 1,000 hours of video showing terrible conditions, especially for calves. Permanently taken from their mothers at birth, in accordance with standard industry practice, they were confined to tiny outdoor cages that left them exposed to harsh sunlight and rain, many living in their own feces.
Reluctant to eat after being taken from their mothers, they were force-fed with metal tubes by undertrained employees who occasionally punctured the calves’ lungs, leading to their deaths, Couto said. Sick cows and calves were left to die in fields, he said, with no veterinary care.
“They were going into convulsion from the heat, from the direct sunlight,” Couto said. “The mortality rate was monstrous. There were bodies everywhere. The calves were living with the dead. They were purposely penned in these 6-by-4 enclosures with corpses of calves that recently died.”
Couto described a sea of tiny cages, with hundreds of calves, often in inches or up to a foot of water.
“Could you imagine a newborn baby, barely able to stand, being purposely put in a cage where they can’t sit down?” he said. “These babies are trying to sleep, trying to keep their noses above water to keep from drowning.”
Burnham Dairy did not respond to a message requesting comment. Publix said it suspended deliveries from this dairy last week, when its managers first learned of the investigation. Now, with the release of the video, Publix said it is “shocked by the cruelty shown toward the animals.”
“At Publix, we believe animals should be treated humanely during all phases of their lives,” said a statement from the company. “We recognize the importance of the well-being of animals used to provide food to our customers. We also appreciate the trust our customers place in us to do the right thing, and we work hard to live up to that expectation.”
Southeast Milk Inc., the cooperative through which Burnham sells its milk, issued a statement Thursday saying it has started a review of the dairy.
“Animal abuse of any kind is never tolerated at SMI,” the statement said. “While some of the conditions depicted at Burnham Dairy reflect our farming community’s struggle to deal with the aftermath of the historic Hurricane Irma, others clearly show a breakdown in the adherence to our SMI protocols, as well as our broader dairy community standards.”
The Florida Department of Agriculture issued a statement from state veterinarian Michael Short.
“Cruelty to animals has no place in agricultural practices,” the statement said. “The welfare of animals in agriculture is a vital part of farmers and ranchers’ responsibility to be good stewards of all of God’s creatures.”
The National Milk Producers Federation announced it had placed the dairy on probation and has begun a third-party audit of its operations through a program called Farmers Assuring Responsible Management, saying it “takes seriously all allegations of animal abuse or mistreatment.”
The federation said its animal welfare program will work with Florida’s dairies to improve worker training. And it criticized Animal Recovery Mission for not releasing evidence of mistreatment as soon as it happened, saying the “months-long delay in sharing the information that was released this week has hindered the ability of the FARM Program and others to immediately put the welfare of farm animals first.”
Couto says this is a ridiculous complaint. A serious investigation requires time to gather evidence, he said. Had he come to them with just one or two examples of cows being whipped, he said they could have been dismissed as isolated incidents. And he said far from the abuse reflecting a lack of training, it showed workers doing exactly what they had been trained to do.
“In the milking parlor itself, if the employees didn’t move the cows fast enough into milking position, the managers would come in and they would hold types of seminars, they would hold demonstrations themselves and show the employees how to properly beat and torture the animals to get them into the milking parlor and out of the milking parlor as fast as they possibly could,” he said. “Why? To get the next group in to produce more milk and more profit for this small family farm dairy.”
Last week, the group released undercover video of cows being abused at the larger Larson Dairy, also in Okeechobee County. The Okeechobee County Sheriff’s Office issued arrest warrants Thursday in the case but would release no details about them.
Michele Bell, spokeswoman for the Sheriff ’s Office, said no criminal investigations have been launched into Burnham Dairy because no one has submitted any complaints or allegations about it.
Publix said it suspended deliveries from the dairy last week. Now, with the release of the video, Publix said it is “shocked by the cruelty shown toward the animals.”