Three Charged With Animal Cruelty At Fair Oaks Farms
CHICAGO (CBS)-- Three people have been charged in connection with animal cruelty at Fair Oaks Farms, according to the Newton County Sheriff's Office.
Officials said names of the three individuals, charged with "beating a vertebrate animal," will be released Tuesday.
In a press release, officials said other persons of interest are being interviewed.
The owners of an Indiana dairy farm apologized 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 Chicago.
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.
