Editorial: Animal welfare at Fair Oaks Farms — support the whistleblowers

Newborn calves were thrown about. Young calves were kicked in the head and hit with steel rods. Dead calves were piled up in the dirt.

This is not alleged. This is documented fact, captured in video secretly recorded last year at a Northwest Indiana dairy farm by an undercover animal rights investigator.

The graphic video, released this week by Animal Recovery Mission, an animal rights group, has outraged people across the country and led grocers to stop selling milk products from the dairy, Fair Oaks Farms. In the Chicago area, Jewel-Osco and a second grocery chain, Tony’s Fresh Market, have announced they will not sell products by Fairlife, a West Loop dairy owned by by Fair Oaks Farms.

Once again, an investigator posing as a worker has brought to light animal welfare abuses that a factory farm would rather you did not see. We first saw that 113 years ago here in Chicago, with the publication of Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel “The Jungle,” an expose of the horrors of the old Union Stockyards.

And, once again, we are reminded of the importance of defending such undercover efforts, in the name of animal welfare, workers’ rights and free speech.

For at least three decades, factory farm lobbyists have worked to keep secret animal welfare abuses by pushing “ag-gag” laws that punish whistleblowers who expose cruelty. Ag-gag laws make it a criminal act to record, possess or distribute photos, videos or audio at a farm.

Ag-gag laws have been pushed in at least 25 states, including Illinois and Indiana, and currently exist in seven states: Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina and North Dakota. Texas has a law banning photo-taking drones over factory farms.

Similar laws, we should note, also have been designed to silence whistleblowers in other industries in which the quality of mercy is sometimes strained, such as nursing homes, day care centers and veterans’ homes.

The factory farm industry insists that its only concern is preserving its privacy rights. That’s a hard argument to sell, though, among the millions of consumers — let alone animal rights activists — who are looking for every assurance that the dairy products, eggs and meat they consume are safely and ethically produced.

“The question is what are they trying to hide,” says Kenny Torrella, vice president of public engagement for the advocacy group Mercy for Animals. “These huge factory farms never give tours — or only on very rare occasions, and with a heads-up, so they can be on their best behavior.”

Short of going vegetarian or vegan — and you’ll get no argument against that here — Americans can use their daily purchasing power to improve the lives of farm animals.

The ASPCA encourages consumers to “shop with your heart” — replacing conventional meat, eggs and dairy products with plant-based or meaningfully “welfare-certified” ones. The best three certificates to look for, says they ASPCA, are “Animal Welfare Approved,” “Certified Humane” and “Global Animal Partnership.”

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