DISMANTLE DAIRY:
St Helen’s Goat Milk Exposed
INVESTIGATION RELEASE: 27TH JULY 2020
BREAKING SURGE INVESTIGATION RELEASED IN THE INDEPENDENT EXCLUSIVE:
Goat milk and goat farming is often viewed as an ethical alternative to cow’s milk, however an investigation into the most prominent goat milk company in the UK, St Helen’s, revealed a very different reality to the one told to us by goat farmers.
St Helen’s products, which include goats’ milk, yoghurt, butter and cheese, can be found on the shelves of Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose, Morrisons, Coops, Booths and Marks & Spencers, plus online retailer Ocado, according to its website.
St Helen’s advertising paints a rosy picture of the lives that these goats lead. However, as this footage shows, even at the UK’s foremost producer of goat milk products, this is simply not true.
Tail twisting and rough handling was documented as being standard practice, with farmers regularly holding the goats by their necks, twisting their tails until they cry out in pain, throwing them around and even hitting them.
Farmers were also documented pulling the goats by their ears, forcing them on to a conveyor belt, or slamming them down on to their backs. Once on the conveyor belt, the goats have their hooves trimmed, a procedure that takes place because the goats are farmed indoors their whole lives, meaning that the hooves do not wear down naturally, as they would in the wild.
Due to the fast paced and careless handling, goats were frequently hurt by the procedure and cried out in pain. Some goats were also seen struggling to stand after they had been removed from the conveyor belt. Lameness and physical discomfort was also documented regularly on the farm, with goats struggling to stand, or walk.
As is standard on animal farms, dead and dying animals could be seen lying around the farm - a worker was also documented restraining several goats, before another individual injected them with a chemical euthanasia, their bodies going limp as they died. The workers then poked their eyes to make sure they were dead, before then dragging their dead bodies by the legs.
Legal experts at Advocates for Animals - the first UK law firm dedicated to animal protection - were consulted by Surge prior to release of the footage, and identified potential breaches of the Animal Welfare Act, plus incidences that bring into question St Helen’s adherence to several regulatory codes and guidelines of best practice including the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations.
“St Helen’s is regarded as the best of the best when it comes to goat farming, however that means nothing for the goats who are exploited and treated as objects. They are nothing other than commodities for St Helen’s to exploit for profit, and contrary to the social media marketing that St Helen’s use, these animals suffer immensely, their bodies thrown around, hit and discarded. Unfortunately for animals, St Helen’s really is as good as it gets, meaning that the only way we can avoid paying for animal cruelty, is to buy the plant based alternative instead.”