Fair Oaks Farms is a popular agritourism destination about 70 miles south of Chicago, which attracts about 500,000 tourists annually, farm officials said.
Three former workers were charged with animal cruelty and on June 12, one of the three, 36-year-old Edgar Gardozo-Vasquez, was arrested on a warrant and taken into custody at the Newton County Jail, according to the sheriff’s office.
The department says U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement has placed a hold on Gardozo-Vasquez.
The three men—Gardozo-Vasquez, Santiago Ruvalcaba Contreros, 31, and Miguel Angel Navarro Serrano, 39— were all charged with a misdemeanor count of animal cruelty and a felony count of torturing or mutilating a vertebrate animal, the office said.
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Cows Hit With Metal Poles
The new footage released Wednesday, June 12, shows the workers striking the adult cows with their hands and metal poles as they attempt to load the animals into a carousel, the animal rights group said. The abuse allegedly broke the tails of some uncooperative cows.Animal Recovery Mission said the footage shows the “daily mistreatment of the resident farm animals,” and cows can be seen being milked just hours after birth, with the placenta sacs still visible and blood coating their legs.
In contrast, the video also shows a worker leading a group of visitors for a farm tour, and he can be heard telling the group it’s “a joyride for them.”
The new footage was allegedly shot secretly in spring this year, while the two videos released last week were filmed in the second half of 2018 and show different employees, according to Animal Recovery Mission’s director of investigations, AJ Garcia.
Rachel Taylor, spokeswoman for the group, said the newly released footage exposes mistreatment of cows at Indiana’s largest dairy farm.
“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,” McCloskey wrote.
