Pickaxes & Hammers Used to kill Calves - Exposed by Mercy For Animals.

A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation provides a horrifying look into E6 Cattle Co. in Hart, Texas.E6 Cattle rears calves for use on dairy farms, confining approximately 10,000 calves and subjecting them to lives of prolonged neglect and misery. For over two weeks in March of 2011, an MFA undercover investigator documented the operation's deplorable conditions and brutal mistreatment of animals.

Kirt Espenson, the owner of the factory farm, acknowledged on hidden camera that the company does not provide medical care to cross-bred calves, leaving many to suffer to death from untreated illnesses and injuries.

Espenson also required employees to bash in the skulls of calves with hammers approving their use and failing to provide an appropriate alternative.

MFA's hidden camera reveals:

Workers bludgeoning calves in their skulls with pickaxes and hammers often involving 5 to 6 blows, sometimes more before rendering the animals unconscious.

Beaten calves, still alive and conscious, thrown onto dead piles.

Workers kicking downed calves in the head, and standing on their necks and ribs.

Calves confined to squalid hutches, thick with manure and urine build-up, and barely large enough for the calves to turn around or fully extend their legs.

Gruesome injuries and afflictions, including open sores, swollen joints and severed hooves.

Injured and dying calves denied medical care.

The budding horns of calves burned out their skulls without painkillers.

The owner of E6 Cattle required his employees to bash in the calves heads with a claw hammer, forcing them to condemn calves to a prolonged and horrific death.

As Debra Teachout, DVM, asserts, "They feel every blow, until they become unconscious." The American Veterinary Medical Association condemns the use of blows to the head as a means of killing young calves.

Dr. Armaiti May, a practicing veterinarian experienced in the care of farmed animals, echoed Dr. Rollin's sentiment, recommending that  "charges of animal cruelty be brought against the workers involved and that the farm be shut down for cruel treatment of animals and lack of proper oversight of its workers."

This new undercover animal cruelty investigation comes at a time when agribusiness interests in Iowa, Florida, and Minnesota are working to pass legislation that would criminalize such efforts - seeking to conceal their abusive treatment of animals from public scrutiny.

Promptly following the undercover investigation, MFA alerted law enforcement authorities to violations of Texas anti-cruelty law at E6 Cattle, and presented a detailed legal complaint and meticulously compiled evidence of such violations to the Castro County District Attorney and sheriff. 

The evidence demonstrated an ongoing pattern of torture, unjustifiable infliction of pain and suffering on animals, and a failure to provide necessary medical care.

As MFA continues to expose the unconscionable cruelties of animal agriculture, and to diligently pursue justice by aiding prosecutions of animal abusers, consumers still hold the greatest power of all to end the needless suffering and death of calves-and all farmed animals-by adopting a compassionate Vegan Diet.

These farms want to keep their sordid heinous acts of cruelty away from the public eye. I say the public have a right to know exactly what is happening, if they have nothing to hide, why do they want to pass such legislation.