The animal rights group that sent an undercover investigator to videotape alleged abuse at a Shawano County farm this summer is disputing statements made in a Shawano County sheriff’s report summarizing the department’s investigation of the incidents.
Los Angeles-based Mercy For Animals (MFA) sent letters Tuesday to Birnamwood farm owner Alan Andrus and a Shawano County sheriff’s detective alleging the report contained “false and misleading statements.”
Details of the investigation, exclusively reported by the Leader last week, indicated that the MFA investigator who secretly recorded the abuse had been hired at the farm to train and oversee the workers who allegedly engaged in it.
Andrus told the detective he had hired a man identified in the report as Jason to work with and train the Hispanic employees because he was bilingual and fluent in Spanish, according to the detective’s report.
MFA general counsel Vandhana Bala denied that Tuesday, saying Jason was hired as a worker and not a manager.
Bala said, however, there was no formal employment agreement or anything that outlined Jason’s duties.
“There is nothing in writing,” she said.
Portions of the video have been broadcast in the media over the past week. The full video, obtained through an open records request from the Sheriff’s Department, does not show Jason working with the employees that he was videotaping.
There is also nothing in the video that indicates Jason ever tried to intervene or stop any of the alleged abuse.
Bala said that’s because there is a lot of video footage that was not turned over to the Sheriff’s Department.
“He was there for several weeks,” she said.
In the letters sent Tuesday, which MFA provided to the Leader, the animal rights group threatens Andrus with legal action over alleged defamation and claims the Sheriff’s Department tailored its investigation to protect the dairy industry.
“It is unfortunate that Shawano County law enforcement is choosing to turn a blind eye to documented egregious animal abuse in favor of protecting the profits of the dairy industry,” the letter to the Sheriff’s Department states. “It is even more unfortunate that law enforcement is resorting to making false and misleading statements in order to do so.”
Bala went further in her interview with the Leader on Tuesday.
“Shawano County law enforcement stinks of corruption,” she said.
The Sheriff’s Department submitted MFA’s video to one local veterinarian and to Dr. Ellen Hooker, a field veterinarian in the Division of Animal Health at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
Both came to the conclusion that workers seen in the video needed to be trained to handle animals in a better manner, but that none of their actions warranted criminal prosecution.
Bala said she has seen the sheriff’s report but not the statements from the veterinarians.
The investigation results were turned over to the Shawano-Menominee County district attorney’s office, which declined to press charges based on the veterinarians’ conclusions.
Chief Deputy John Gutho said Tuesday the sheriff’s department thoroughly investigated the matter.
“The sheriff’s department did its job. The district attorney’s office did its job,” he said. “It is what it is.”
MFA has sent undercover investigators to videotape at numerous dairy and industrial farm operations over the past few years.
The Andrus farm, Bala said, was chosen at random, with the investigator applying for jobs all around the state and taking work wherever hired.
According to Bala, there has never been a case of a MFA investigator going undercover at a dairy or industrial farm and not finding abuse.
“It’s inherent in modern dairy and factory farming,” she said.
Bala said the group’s goal was to “end the needless suffering of farm animals,” but she also suggested that more humane treatment of animals was not the ultimate goal.
“We advocate the adoption of a plant-based diet,” she said.
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