National Farmers Organization to Face Protest Over Reitz Dairy Farm Cruelty

PETA Seeks Action After Exposé Reveals Beatings, Neglect, Death at Pennsylvania Dairy Facility

For Immediate Release:
July 10, 2019

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

On Thursday, PETA protesters will descend on a busy street corner in Ames––where the National Farmers Organization headquarters is located––in a spirited protest urging the organization to reconsider its ties to Reitz Dairy Farm, a National Farmers milk supplier. The protesters will screen footage from the damning PETA eyewitness exposé revealing that cows at Reitz were beaten, kept in their own waste, and denied veterinary care.

When:    Thursday, July 11, 12 noon

Where:    At the intersection of Lynn Avenue and Lincoln Way, Ames

“No glass of milk justifies beating an animal or leaving lame ones to suffer from seeping, swollen injuries,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on the National Farmers Organization to reevaluate its link to the filth and misery found at this farm.”

A worker at Reitz Dairy Farm was recorded striking a cow who lay trapped in a milking stall nearly 60 times with a cane on her hindquarters, legs, and sensitive udder. A manager denied cows care for obvious injuries, including massively swollen joints seeping blood and pus. Cows limped through their own waste—one later died in it—and calves were separated from their mothers and kept in barns amid urine and manure before the females were later inseminated and used for milk production. In response to the findings, the Pennsylvania State Police ordered the farmer to provide the cows with veterinary care and opened an investigation, which remains active.

PETA has received four whistleblower complaints from Reitz Dairy Farm since 2014. In 2016, a whistleblower reported that the farm’s owner and his son forced cow to lie in their own waste, let udder infections go untreated, slit the throats of conscious cows, and more. PETA’s 2009 investigation of the farm found that cows were kicked, electrically shocked, and jabbed with a blade.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.