DiGiorno Pizza's Cheese Supplier Guilty of Animal Cruelty, Undercover Video Reveals

Fast food restaurants and major ground beef manufacturers get the raw end of scrutiny for their mistreatment of animals. They’re blamed for the decimation of the cow population. They’re constantly under the scope for how they raise their animals to slaughter, feeding them enzymes, keeping them couped in small quarters and dismembering them in high volume. But they’re not the only ones to blame. They’ve become scapegoats in the fight against animal cruelty, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other offenders who easily coast below the radar undetected.

The activist group Mercy for Animals recently published a video taken from inside the Wiese Brothers Farm in Greenleaf, Wisconsin. The farm is home to roughly 2,500 cows and is a major cheese supplier for Nestle’s DiGiorno Pizza, which is the country’s largest frozen pizza distributor.

In the video, farm employees are seen beating and yelling at the innocent cows as they struggle to produce milk. The cows that are too sick to walk themselves are dragged by ropes that are tied to their necks or limbs, resulting in open flesh wounds.

“Draggin live cows and completely suspending them with the cow lift is severe animal abuse,” Temple Grandin, animal behavior expert and livestock industry consultant, told Mercy for Animals. “The actions of these people went beyond rough handling and escalated to the level of cruelty. Kicking, beating and hard whipping of downed cows is abusive.”

In response to the video, Digiorno announced this morning that it was dropping Wiese Brothers as a supplier. “Nestle is outraged and deeply saddened by the mistreatment of animals shown in this video,” company spokeswoman Deborah Cross told NBC. “We will not accept any cheese made with milk from the Wiese Brothers Farm.”

You can watch the video for yourself below, but beware of its raw content.