Animal cruelty charges have been filed against three people after a graphic video was released that showed workers at a northwest Indiana farm kicking and throwing young calves, according to published reports.
The Newton County Sheriff’s Office said three people were charged with “beating a vertebrate animal,” a misdemeanor, according to the Associated Press. The case remains active and their names were not released.
WARNING: Video features graphic content
An investigator with Animal Recovery Mission, a Miami-based animal rights group, secretly recorded the disturbing footage in 2018 while working for several months at Fair Oaks Farms, a popular destination for school field trips that Food & Wine magazine has called the “Disneyland of agricultural tourism.”
The group said that the footage shows the “daily mistreatment of the resident farm animals” at the farm’s dairies about 70 miles south of Chicago located off I-65 in northwest Indiana.
Fair Oaks Farms founder Mike McCloskey said in a statement last week that four employees seen in the video have been fired and actions have been taken to prevent further abuse. A fifth person shown in the video was a third-party truck driver who was transporting calves, he said.
