The latest undercover video claiming animal abuse at a dairy, this one in Paris, Texas, goes to new heights of distortion and misrepresentation to promote a vegan agenda.
That agenda was also once again put miles ahead of actual concern for animal well-being. The October 9 release of the video appears to have come months after incidents were first observed, yet were not reported to appropriate state authorities.
Filmed this summer by an undercover operative of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the video focuses heavily on calves and relies far more upon words than it does images.
Its major theme is calves being taken from their mothers – a message custom-tailored and translated for an audience that has only the human birth process and infant care to compare it to.
It is a change of attack that dairy producers should have been expecting: give wildly misrepresented descriptions of routine dairy practices to trigger negative emotional reactions.
Here is an example of how extreme the spin doctoring has become: Commenting after the new video was released, a PETA official said, "Used-up cows were sent off to slaughter" at the dairy.
In its comment about what the video shows, the Mercy For Animals website says, "Hours-old baby calves were isolated in plastic hutches, unable to nurse from their mothers or see any other calves."
The video uses a female narrator and randomly gives several calves names – Annie, Emily, Joy and Fifi – to forge an emotional connection. Examples of misrepresentation include footage of an assisted birth (which looks like a placenta rather than a calf) that is presented as being how all calvings occur and which the narrator describes as "roughly pulling calves from the birth canal."
As a cow is shown licking a newborn, the narrator says, "Within hours of birth, all newborn calves are taken away from their mothers" and "are then force-fed milk from other cows" and "shortly after being taken from their mothers, calves had tags punched into their ears without pain killers, a common practice in the dairy industry."
Nothing is said about colostrum, fecal contamination risk from dams, dipping navels to prevent disease, or any other animal husbandry practice designed to protect newborns.
Later, during a description of scours that is represented as being widespread at the dairy, two calves are shown snuggled together on a very clean slatted floor. Of them the narrator says, "It was all these cute calves could do to comfort each other while suffering from scours. Eventually, they would be killed."
Neither, of course, appeared to have scours, nor is there any substantiation whatsoever of either disease status or what became of them.
The video overflows with claims – claims of rampant abuse, disease, unsanitary conditions, and lack of medical care - claims presented as fact that, of course, are not substantiated in any way.
But as the dairy industry has seen repeatedly, one strategy of these videos is to say something often enough to an audience that doesn't know any better until it accepts it as fact.
(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2015
October 19, 2015
