Fair Oaks Admits The Ugly Truth: Sending Mothers and Young Calves To Slaughter

Written by Indiana Animal Rights Alliance. Posted in Blog

Yesterday we shared a post about Fair Oaks Farms not being transparent and failing to answer legitimate questions people were asking. To our surprise they did answer some of those questions and it reveals the dark truth behind their operations and the many thousands of mothers and young cows who die in their care or are sent to slaughter every year. 

CRUELTY BY THE NUMBERS – An Unimaginable Number of Cows Killed 

These numbers are estimates based on their answers. Here are some disturbing statistics. 

Fair Oaks sends up to 18,000 male calves per year to be raised and killed at only 17-20 MONTHS old. 
Fair Oaks said, “Our bull calves are sold to a farm where they are raised for beef, once they reach a weight of 1300lbs (17-20 months) they go to market.”

Their website reports that 80-100 babies are born there daily. That would be up to 36,000 births per year. Assuming half of them are males, that means they ship up to 18,000 baby calves off that will be slaughtered before they are even two years old. Cows can live natural lives up to 20 years. 

Fair Oaks sends up to 6,000 mother cows per year to be killed at only 5-7 years old.
When asked at what age mother cows are sent to slaughter Fair Oaks said, “Our cows go to market at 5-7 years on average.” With 36,000 cows on the farm, that equates to around 6,000 mother cows killed per year simply because their milk production dropped to a level that is not profitable enough.

Fair Oaks euthanizes about 720 cows per year.
When asked “what percentage of mother cows are ‘downed’ or die on your farm?” Fair Oaks said, “We have a mortality rate of 3% and a euthanasia rate of 2%, which match with the industry standard.” We are unsure specifically what is counted in their mortality rate, but the 2% euthanasia rate equates to them killing 720 cows per year. 

Every Glass Of Milk Contributes To Animal Cruelty
These are sad truths we have always known about the dairy industry but seeing Fair Oaks say it openly will hopefully get more people to think about ditching dairy and trying cruelty free plant-based milk products.

Sources
Wikipedia: Life Expectancy of  Dairy Cows
Number of Cows at Fair Oaks from their own website
Life Expectancy of a Dairy Cow from Lindsay Furlito, Dairy Specialist
Fair Oaks’ Answers to Questions on Facebook  on 8/8/19 (image below)

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Surprise! Fair Oaks Won’t Answer Questions

Written by Indiana Animal Rights Alliance. Posted in Blog

(UPDATE: Fair Oaks has actually answered some of these questions and admitted sending young mother cows and adolescent male babies to be slaughtered. We will publish an article about it.)

Fair Oaks posted an update about their animal welfare efforts on their Facebook page yesterday. They have subsequently been deleting dozens of legitimate comments and questions from people concerned about the treatment of their animals. They want you to believe they value transparency, but they continue to hide things from the public and shirk the questions. To our knowledge owner Mike McCloskey has not done a single live interview since the undercover videos were released two months ago. Why is it so hard to answer live questions rather than release scripted YouTube and Facebook videos?

This follows years of deceptive marketing (there are at least two federal lawsuits against FairLife for marketing their products as humane) where they show you only what they want you to see. When the undercover footage was released in June it showed animals being treated in the most horrific ways. Fair Oaks was also caught lying about not sending their baby calves to veal farms.

They want people to feel better because they have hired animal welfare experts to advise them and because they installed cameras on their farms. More on that below.

Here are some of the questions that Fair Oaks has been deleting and refuses to answer. These do not violate any of their stated rules.

 

Are your female cows sent to slaughter? If so, at what age are they typically slaughtered?

You say male calves are sent off to be raised to over 1000 lbs. At about what age are these young cows killed?

What percentage of mother cows are “downed” or die on your farm?

Do you deny that baby calves naturally have a desire to be near their mothers and vice versa?

Can the public have access to live feeds of all the cameras on the farm?

In the ARM (undercover) videos it was clear that your milking lines and equipment cause frequent slips, falls and injuries. Have you stopped using all that equipment?

Have you killed any healthy mother cows as a result of the decline in demand since the undercover videos were released? (By killed, we don’t meant you have necessarily done it yourself, but sent them to slaughter.)

 

These questions are not trolling, inflammatory or rude in any way. They are questions that people who care about animals would legitimately have. Why is Fair Oaks deleting them and banning people from their page who ask them? The answer is self explanatory:

If they gave honest answers to these questions it would make them look bad.

They want you to come to their Dairy Adventure to see the animals up close and marvel at how adorable they are and how nice the whole process appears. But they don’t want to talk about the breaking of maternal bonds or the slaughter of mothers and babies because no amount of animal welfare measures will stop the worst cruelties of all.

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Response to the “Animal Welfare Expert” in WLFI Article

Written by Indiana Animal Rights Alliance. Posted in Blog

Lafayette, IN news channel WLFI ran a story Monday about the animal abuse videos at Fair Oaks Farms where an “animal welfare expert” Dr. Candace Croney claimed that some of what was witnessed in the videos was not abuse. Here is our response and why she is wrong.

We would first like to point out that the article states that Dr. Croney has a working relationship with Fair Oaks, working with personnel at their Pig Adventure. She is not a disinterested third party, but one of the players in an industrial scale system of violence and abuse.

I was astounded that Dr. Croney said she deliberately stopped watching the video yet the station relied upon her to act as an “expert” for their story. If you can’t even watch a video of what happens in an agricultural practice, maybe it’s time to end that practice.

When reading Dr. Croney’s analysis, here are some things to keep in mind:

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