Avoiding Spies On Your Farm

Farms beset by spies
Even humane facilities undertake precautions
Sunday, June 6, 2010 02:59 AM
By Holly Zachariah
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Dave Thorbahn knows his business is a target. Some of his 184 employees already have been offered cash to videotape what goes on inside his barns.

Who offered them the money or why, Thorbahn can’t say. It could have been someone looking for trade secrets, but he suspects otherwise. He wonders whether it was someone working for an animal-rights organization that wanted a peek inside Select Sires, a bull-semen facility with 1,791 bulls in 57 barns in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Thorbahn is president and CEO of the bovine-genetics business, which happens to have its headquarters along Rt. 42 near Plain City, with buildings directly across the highway from and beside Conklin Dairy Farms, a relatively small farm with just a handful of employees.

But Conklin’s place has been the subject of a criminal investigation since Mercy For Animals, an animal-rights group that promotes a vegan lifestyle, released on May 24 a secretly recorded video showing an employee of Conklin Farms viciously beating and abusing cows and calves.

Conklin herdsman Billy Joe Gregg was subsequently fired and has been charged with 12 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty and a felony weapons charge.

Mercy For Animals’ executive director, Nathan Runkle, said an investigator working for his organization was in Ohio applying for jobs at several farms and was living near Conklin’s when he caught wind of potential abuse there and was hired.

Thorbahn isn’t so sure it was that simple.

“I have to ask myself, were they in this area because of us?” he said. “We’d be quite a plum for an organization like that.” Read More

Every farm or ranch that raises livestock is a target for the animal rights groups that use undercover videos to raise money. While it’s hard to believe that farmers and ranchers would need to protect themselves against the very people they feed and clothe, that is the sad reality. They are desperately trying to get hired anywhere they can. It’s important that farmers and ranchers protect themselves against hiring someone like this. The reason it is important is because these undercover spies won’t be there to work and take care of livestock. They will be more concerned about looking for a camera shot that they can get paid for and may play well with consumers that don’t understand animal husbandry. And, when they can’t accomplish that goal, they will simply not show up for work any longer and move to the next place, here again leaving the proper care of the livestock in jeopardy.

PETA Employee Accused of Neglecting Animals

Attorney: PETA Worker Neglected Snakes in His Care
Attorney says PETA worker neglected job with exotic animal dealer in effort to shut it down
ARLINGTON, Texas December 29, 2009 (AP)

Attorneys for an exotic animal dealer have accused an employee of intentionally neglecting animals to further his work as an undercover investigator for an animal rights group.

Howard Goldman could have done more to provide food, water and care for the animals that he said were being mistreated, said Lance Evans, an attorney for Jasen and Vanessa Shaw, the owners of U.S. Global Exotics.

Instead, Goldman secretly took photos and made daily reports to send to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Evans said.

"He was more concerned about helping PETA achieve its goal of putting U.S. Global out of business than actually aiding any animals that he felt were in distress," Evans said. Goldman worked at the Arlington facility for seven months.

Goldman testified last week that PETA asked him to apply for a job at U.S. Global Exotics to investigate conditions. PETA paid him $135 for each day he turned in a report while working as snake caretaker. Read More

I have talked about this before. If an employer hires someone to do a job and they are busy filming instead of doing the job they were hired for, aren’t they part of the problem? These people are hired to help prevent problems. When they don’t do their job, they create problems, and then film them. Remember, this guy didn’t get paid unless he turned in a report. How long do you think PETA is going to pay out if the reports come back clean every time? If your employment depends on finding problems, you will probably make sure problems are found.

PETA Releases Dairy Video

PETA Releases Abuse Video Connected to Minn. Co.
Published : Tuesday, 29 Sep 2009, 4:56 PM CDT

MINNEAPOLIS - The animal rights group, PETA, has released undercover video depicting animal abuse to dairy cows at a Pennsylvania farm that supplies milk to Minnesota based Land O’ Lakes, Inc.

The video shot during the course of several months depicts filthy conditions in both the barn and milking parlor along with cows suffering from severe illness and infections.

Daphna Nachminovich, PETA Vice President of Cruelty Investigations said at a St. Paul news conference, “Just the deplorable conditions that the animals were kept in made for not just cruelty, but also a health concern for the consumer.”

The video and pictures were captured on the Deitz family dairy farm in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. A former employee of the farm provided the video to PETA after repeated attempts to get the farm to take better care of its cows. On September 22nd, the whistle blower filed in Pennsylvania magistrate court fifteen summary charges of animal neglect and abuse against the dairy farm. Read More

As with most of the videos that are released from animal rights groups, we only see an edited version of the entire story. The only thing we know for sure is that there were some crippled cows at this dairy. How they got they way and how they were handled afterwards is unknown. Hopefully the entire story is available in the near future. What we do know for sure is that the vast overwhelming majority of livestock producers care for their animals. Never before in the history of animal agriculture have we had the tools to provide so much care for our livestock. If the dairy cattle in the video were receiving an inadequate level of care then that situation needs to be resolved immediately.

Undercover Video Alleges Abuse

AP Exclusive: Video shows workers abusing pigs
By FREDERIC J. FROMMER – 5 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — An undercover video shot at an Iowa pig farm shows workers hitting sows with metal rods, slamming piglets on a concrete floor and bragging about jamming rods up into sows' hindquarters.

On the video, obtained by The Associated Press, a supervisor tells an undercover investigator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that when he gets angry or a sow won't move, "I grab one of these rods and jam it in her (anus)."

The farm, located outside of Bayard, Iowa, about 60 miles west of Des Moines, is a supplier to Hormel Foods of Austin, Minn. PETA wants to use the results of the investigation to pressure Hormel, the maker of Spam and other food products, to demand that its suppliers ensure humane treatment of pigs.

Hormel spokeswoman Julie Henderson Craven on Tuesday called the abuses "completely unacceptable." Read More

The abuse of farm animals is not acceptable behavior. If these allegations are true, these people were acting on their own behalf and are not representative of the hard working, farming and ranching families that care for their animals. The other thing that needs to be called into question here is why the investigator didn’t do anything to stop this abuse. He admits that it took all of his willpower not to do anything when witnessing the abuse. It would seem to me that getting the footage to put on PETA’s website was more important than stopping the abuse.