Animal Equality India Urges Authorities to Prosecute Buffalo Abusers
India is the world’s largest cow and buffalo milk and meat producer, exploiting over 350 million buffalos and cows every year.
Animal Equality’s investigative team in India has documented the treatment of cows and buffalos across the country, including their transportation from dairy farms to slaughterhouses.
As part of this research, our investigators witnessed and filmed the loading of buffalos onto a truck outside a dairy farm near Kolkata, India, where we discovered severe violations of India’s anti-cruelty laws.
What We Found
Our camera filmed scenes of deliberate abuses inflicted on these animals, including:
- Workers beating a female buffalo for several minutes, twisting her tail and pocking her genitals with a stick causing bleeding injuries and extreme pain.
- Workers pouring water over her mouth and nostrils causing her difficulty to breath
- The ramp used for loading the buffaloes on the truck was positioned at a steep angle, causing buffaloes to struggle to get on the truck
- More than five buffaloes were crammed onto the truck, and each of them was subjected abuses
What Are We Doing
Animal Equality submitted the footage to the Animal Welfare Board of India, Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services and the Calcutta Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The Animal Welfare Board of India in turn filed a complaint with the Commissioner of Police and forwarded the evidence to the Deputy Commissioner and the Director of state Animal Husbandry.
Disappointingly, the local authorities have not acted yet. This is why Animal Equality India has launched a petition urging the authorities to prosecute the workers who abused these buffaloes.
Dairy Farming: A Cruelty That Knows No Boundaries
Animal Equality has investigated over 140 dairy farms around the world. We documented calves left to die in the freezing cold in the US, buffaloes being abused and forced to live in filthy conditions inside an Italian buffalo mozzarella farm, newborn calves being brutally force-fed in an organic dairy farm in the UK and much more.
Our most recent investigation inside a Welsh dairy farm aired on BBC One’s Panorama, exposing the reality of dairy farming to millions of astonished people.
Our investigator covertly filmed troubling scenes spanning several months, including a number of serious legal violations. The footage reveals workers kicking and punching cows in the face and stomach, twisting their tails, and hitting them with sharp, metal shovels.
Animal abuse is not unique to any one continent. That’s why Animal Equality’s team continues to work around the clock to uncover illegality and animal suffering taking place on the ground.
