Fair Oaks Farms Founder Responds To Animal Cruelty Video

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FAIR OAKS, Ind.–You can always end up with bad people in your organization, said Fair Oaks Farms founder Dr. Mike McClosky in a seven-minute video update Thursday. He was responding to a video released Tuesday, that showed four employees and a fifth person abusing cows and calves.

“Watching this video broke my heart and created a sadness that I will endure for the rest of my life,” he said.

McClosky said he is taking measures that include putting up cameras everywhere there is an animal and human interaction. The cams will be monitored 24 all day and all night, he promised.

“I made the decision that as were training our people in our values and training them about animal welfare, that I wanted to build a trust, that we trusted them to do this. And, I felt that if we used cameras that we demonstrated a lack of trust in our people.”

McClosky admitted that it was bad judgment, and that employees will be monitored from now on.

He said that three of the employees on the video were fired before he was aware of the video, some three months ago.

“Unfortunately, the fourth one was not reported doing animal cruelty and we had no idea about it until we watched the video yesterday and we terminated him yesterday afternoon,” said McClosky.

Fair Oaks offers an interactive farm experience for visitors. McClosky said he was shocked to see employees showing such blatant disregard for the animals.