3 charged following release of video that shows alleged animal abuse at Fair Oaks Farms

FAIR OAKS, Ind. (Sun-Times Media Wire) - Animal cruelty charges have been filed against three people after a graphic video was released showing workers at an Indiana farm kicking and throwing young calves.

The Newton County Sheriff’s Office said 31-year-old Santiago Ruvalcaba Contreros, 36-year-old Edgar Gardozo Vazquez and 39-year-old Miguel Angel Navarro Serrano are each charged with “beating a vertebrate animal,” a misdemeanor. Investigators are still trying to locate them and no arrests have been made as of Tuesday morning.

An investigator with Animal Recovery Mission, a Miami-based animal rights group, secretly recorded the footage in 2018 while working for several months at Fair Oaks Farms.

The group said that the footage shows the “daily mistreatment of the resident farm animals” at the farm’s dairies about 70 miles south of Chicago located off I-65 in northwest Indiana.

Fair Oaks Farms founder Mike McCloskey said in a statement last week that four employees seen in the video have been fired and actions have been taken to prevent further abuse. A fifth person shown in the video was a third-party truck driver who was transporting calves, he said.