ABC News is reporting that Phil Niles, the worker at Willet Dairy filmed on hidden camera by an undercover Mercy For Animals' investigator striking a cow in the head with a wrench and then bragging about such abuse, has been suspended.The mere suspension of Niles fails to address the issues at the root of MFA's recent undercover dairy industry investigation. As ABC News reports:
"Animal rights groups, however, say that suspension is not enough, and that Niles should be fired and brought up on criminal charges."Although workers who maliciously abuse animals should certainly be reprimanded, it's important to remember that the vast majority of farmed animal suffering is caused by the intensive confinement, mutilations without painkillers, untreated disease and injury, and the unnatural and deprived conditions that largely go hand-in-hand with factory farming.
"This employee should be fired, prohibited from working around animals, referred for psychiatric evaluation, and criminally prosecuted for abusing animals," said Nathan Runkle of the advocacy group Mercy for Animals, whose undercover investigator filmed Niles striking the cow at Willet, one of New York's largest dairies.
"This action is too little, too late and fails to address larger underlying issues of animal cruelty at Willet Dairy."
Compassionate consumers can reject the abuse of cows by adopting a vegan diet.
Click here to read the ABC News story.
