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A video exposé of a Pennsylvania dairy farm has prompted police to investigate the facility.
According to vegan charity PETA, footage obtained at Reitz Dairy Farm shows ‘multiple acts of cruelty’, including a worker ‘kicking a cow who lay trapped in a milking stall and striking her nearly 60 times with a cane on her hindquarters, legs, and sensitive udder’.
PETA adds: “Cows limped through their own waste – one later died in it.”
Whistleblower
The charity says its investigation was prompted by a whistleblower complaint earlier this year, adding that it has received four such calls since 2014.
Farmer owner Lloyd Reitz Sr. was tried for animal cruelty charges alomng with his son Andy Reitz in 2010, but were cleared by a judge who described video evidence as ‘inconclusive’.
Investigation
Following PETA’s submission of its 2019 footage to the Pennsylvania State Police, an investigation has been opened into the farm.
The charity says that police visited the farm on last week and ‘ordered the owner to work with a veterinarian to provide the injured animals there with care’.
‘Squalid’
“Every piece of dairy cheese represents a lifetime of misery for cows at a squalid facility such as Reitz Dairy Farm,” PETA Executive Vice President, Tracy Reiman, said in a statement.
“PETA urges Lanco-Pennland to reconsider its relationship with the National Farmers Organization – and encourages consumers to choose vegan milks and cheeses that no sensitive cows had to suffer for.”
The Associated Press reached Reitz’s owner, Lloyd Reitz Sr., on Thursday on the phone. He said he had no comment on the allegations. PBN has since tried to contact the facility.
