The California based butter company, Challenge Dairy, has come under fire by the Animal Legal Defense Fund and country singer Willie Nelson. An online petition alleges that the Dairy uses products from a calf ranch that “violates state anti-cruelty laws.”
An online petition urges the California facility as well as St. Paul, Minn.-based Land O’Lakes to stop using milk from calves raised at the Mendes Calf Ranch in Tipton in the Central Valley.
“As a cowboy, I must stand up for cows,” Nelson said in a cover letter for the petition, which now has more than 23,000 signatures. “It’s a tragedy to see the small-town farmer, who cared deeply for his backyard animals, is rapidly being edged out by huge facilities that look more like factories than farms — and treat animals no better than machines.”
The petition was started in October. In June 2006, the ALDF filed lawsuit against Mendes for allegedly isolating and confining newborn calves in crates, which they say is illegal.
A press release from ALDF states that “Baby calves are almost immediately taken away from their mothers and shipped to the Tulare County facility, which houses as many as 12,000 calves at one time.”
Nelson’s letter describes the calves living “for extended periods in cramped, filthy crates — often without enough room to turn around or lie down completely.”