Fairlife — the popular milk brand — and its many animal welfare investigation scandals, explained

This story was initially printed in The Spotlight, Vox’s member-exclusive journal. To get early entry to member-exclusive tales each month, be part of the Vox Membership program at this time.You don’t want me to let you know that the US is within the midst of an obsession with protein. By now, you’ve in all probability seen further protein in meals and drinks it as soon as didn’t belong: ice cream, popcorn, iced tea — even water. Google searches for “protein” have surged in recent times, and the macronutrient appears to be on the tip of each health influencers’ tongue.However the influence of the protein craze goes past snacks and social media. It helped the meat business obtain document gross sales in 2024, and it probably contributed to a shocking change in American consuming habits: Final 12 months, for the primary time in 15 years, shoppers elevated their cow’s milk consumption.Maybe no firm has each benefited from and accelerated these converging tendencies greater than Fairlife, the Coca-Cola-owned milk model that accommodates zero lactose and boasts 50 % extra protein and 50 % much less sugar than common milk. That distinctive dietary profile, achieved by a patented “ultra-filtration” course of, has helped flip Fairlife right into a billion-dollar enterprise in below a decade, rating second in name-brand refrigerated milk gross sales final 12 months.Fairlife milk has much less sugar and extra protein than common cow’s milk, and 0 lactose. Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket by way of Getty Photographs“There’s this obsession with protein [among] younger males proper now that’s simply been blockbuster to” Fairlife, agriculture researcher Austin Frerick, creator of Barons: Cash, Energy, and the Corruption of America’s Meals Business, advised me. The corporate’s success has been a godsend for Coca-Cola, which turned Fairlife’s sole proprietor in 2020; it’s now the beverage big’s fastest-growing US model.Fairlife has distinguished itself not simply with its excessive protein content material, but additionally by claiming that its milk is greater high quality than its rivals, its cows are handled humanely, and its farms are environmentally sustainable. “Consider in higher,” reads one of many firm’s taglines.That feel-good story has earned Fairlife’s husband-and-wife co-founders Mike and Sue McCloskey glowing profiles in Meals & Wine, NPR, and Fortune, together with invites to talk at conferences held by South by Southwest, Yale, Quick Firm, and TEDx.Sue McCloskey, a co-founder of Fairlife and Choose Milk Producers, at Truthful Oaks Farms. Michael Conroy/Related PressBut it’s a narrative that has, in recent times, more and more collided with actuality. In 2019, an undercover investigation by the nonprofit Animal Restoration Mission (ARM) on the McCloskeys’ flagship farm in Indiana, a provider to Fairlife on the time, revealed horrific animal abuse: staff kicking calves within the head, hitting them with metal rods, and slamming them to the bottom, amongst many different cruelties.Quickly after, the McCloskeys apologized. However since then, ARM has launched a number of extra stomach-wrenching investigations into dairy farms that belong to Choose Milk Producers — a cooperative, additionally co-founded by the McCloskeys, of some 100 dairy farms that helped launch Fairlife and provide milk to it.The newest investigation, launched in late June, recorded employees at a New Mexico dairy hitting cows within the head with a metallic pipe, kicking them within the face and physique, dragging new child calves and grownup cows within the grime with a tractor, and quite a few different situations of abuse.Fairlife advised Vox it hasn’t sourced milk from that farm since 2023, however ARM’s investigator shared proof on the contrary. Moreover, in a category motion lawsuit filed earlier this 12 months towards Fairlife, Coca-Cola, the McCloskeys, and Choose Milk Producers, a bunch of shoppers accuse Fairlife of deceiving clients with claims of humane animal remedy, and allege that the New Mexico dairy farm did provide Fairlife on the time of the investigation.Fairlife is way from alone. Farmed animals are largely exempt from federal and state animal cruelty legal guidelines, so business welfare requirements are extremely low, and dairy producers are successfully left to police themselves. Previous investigations alleging horrific abuse are legion throughout the dairy business, together with at dairy farms which have provided to Burger King, Domino’s, Land O’Lakes, Nestlé, Cabot Creamery, and different main meals manufacturers.Between the early 2000s and the mid 2010s, many of those investigations turned high-profile information tales. The livestock business reacted by advocating for legal guidelines to not criminalize animal abuse, however to criminalize the investigators who videotaped the abuse. The McCloskeys had a distinct technique: They capitalized on this period of heightened concern round animal cruelty by promising transparency and humane remedy of their animals.ARM’s slate of investigations have persistently undermined that narrative. However Fairlife has thrived regardless of all of it, revealing the results of shoppers’ willingness to consider story — or ignore a foul one — within the pursuit of ever-more protein.The “terrifying” remedy of cows at an alleged Fairlife milk supplierLast Christmas Eve, a person who had labored on dairy farms for 17 years began his first shift at a big industrial dairy operation, referred to as Woodcrest Dairy, within the New Mexico desert. However there was one thing that set him aside from his coworkers: He was carrying a hidden digital camera.Years prior, he had been a employee at a Fairlife provider farm that ARM investigated for alleged animal abuse. Disturbed by their findings, the employee reached out to the group and ultimately turned an ARM investigator himself.Whereas employed at Woodcrest Dairy for 10 weeks, by early March of this 12 months, he caught dozens of acts of animal abuse on digital camera, together with employees:Kicking cows within the face and bodyForcefully jamming a capsule gun, a metallic rod used to manage medicine, down a cow’s throatHitting cows within the head with a metallic pipe and huge wrench (in keeping with the investigator, this was performed to some cows simply after that they had given start)Inserting a clamp right into a cows’ nostril and yanking on it, inflicting her to bellow in painRepeatedly smacking a cow within the face with a ropeDragging new child calves and grownup cows within the grime with a tractorIn an interview with Vox performed by way of a translator, the investigator, who requested anonymity as a result of covert nature of undercover investigations, described the remedy of cows at Woodcrest Dairy as “terrifying” and stated that the proprietor and managers witnessed it. “They solely care concerning the cash,” he stated. “There’s no care concerning the animals.”“The actions noticed within the video are merciless and reprehensible,” Jim Reynolds, a veterinarian and professor emeritus of enormous animal medication and welfare at Western College of Well being Sciences, advised me in an electronic mail. “The abusive and merciless actions seen within the video symbolize critical issues in administration of the dairy.”The employees’ aggressive calf supply methodology leaves behind a pool of blood. Animal Restoration MissionA employee kicks a restrained cow within the head quite a few instances. Animal Restoration MissionBeyond probably the most blatant cruelty, the investigator documented different animal welfare issues, like “downer” cows — cows unable to face or stroll on their very own, usually because of illness, metabolic points, or post-birth ache. Some had been lifted with a hip clamp that was positioned on their our bodies and hooked up to a tractor; one cow was dragged by the grime whereas hooked up to the tractor. One other cow had a band wrapped round her hind legs to maintain them from splaying.As a result of cows, like all mammals, want to provide start to supply milk, dairy farms revolve round continuous pregnancies and births, which is immensely taxing on their our bodies. The investigator documented quite a few situations of employees doing one thing throughout the birthing course of he had by no means seen: tying a series to the legs of child calves whereas they had been nonetheless of their moms’ start canals, after which leaping on it to pop the calf out. In a single scene, the cow bellows in ache and the calf is partly lined in blood.“The cow and calf each positively suffered from this mistreatment,” Reynolds wrote to me about this a part of the investigation. “The actions seen inform us the workers should not educated appropriately for delivering calves, they haven’t been supplied acceptable gear, and they don’t seem to be managed appropriately.”Fairlife declined an interview request for this story. In an electronic mail to Vox, the corporate stated it stopped sourcing milk from Woodcrest Dairy in 2023. Nevertheless, ARM’s investigator, in a videotaped dialog shared with Vox, requested a truck driver transporting milk from the farm in January if he was taking the milk to a close-by Fairlife plant. The motive force answered sure, specifying that they bring about milk to the Fairlife plant 3 times a day.What’s flawed with dairy?The livestock business — not simply Fairlife — has lengthy portrayed dairy as an important, healthful product from cows who simply occur to be producing milk on quaint, inexperienced pastures. However cows on dairy farms, even after they’re not overtly abused like these seen in undercover investigations into Fairlife, nonetheless face extreme welfare points due to the very nature of dairy manufacturing.Right this moment’s cows have been bred to supply way more milk than they naturally would, which significantly taxes their our bodies. They’re (artificially) impregnated every year — one other bodily stressor — to induce milk manufacturing. After they offer start, their calves are rapidly taken away in order that people can take their moms’ milk.New child calves are then confined alone in tiny hutches. Females go on to turn out to be dairy cows as soon as they’re sexually mature, whereas the male calves are dehorned and castrated — usually with out ache reduction — and offered off to turn out to be veal or beef.Most dairy cows have little to no entry to pasture and spend their lives confined indoors or on grime feedlots. Naturally, they could reside to fifteen to twenty years of age, however by 5 or 6 years outdated, when our bodies give out and their milk yield wanes, they’re despatched off to slaughter.Many of those practices have turn out to be normal on dairy farms of all sizes — not simply on mega dairies. It’s a actuality far totally different from what shoppers usually see in ads and on milk bottles.Woodcrest Dairy has since closed down and couldn’t be reached for remark. Choose Milk Producers, the cooperative that Woodcrest belonged to, advised Vox in an electronic mail that “animal care is a core worth” on the cooperative, and that it investigates “any report of inappropriate animal care.” (Choose Milk confirmed to me that Woodcrest has shut down.)As lately as this March, Choose Milk Producers’ web site acknowledged that the “extremely nutritious milk merchandise of fairlife come from the 99 household owned dairies of Choose Milk Producers.” That internet web page has since been taken down.The Woodcrest Dairy findings had been the most recent in a string of comparable latest investigations. Earlier this 12 months, after ARM launched disturbing movies displaying animal cruelty at two Arizona dairy farms that provided Fairlife, the corporate stated it had instantly suspended ties with the farms. However weeks later, investigators from the group Shopper Safety Basis, separate from ARM, adopted milk being trucked from the Arizona farms to a processing plant run by United Dairymen of Arizona (a cooperative that Fairlife sources a few of its Arizona milk from), after which to a Fairlife plant. Fairlife advised Vox in an electronic mail that it didn’t resume sourcing milk from these farms.And in 2023, ARM launched a stunning investigation into an Indiana dairy operation that ARM says belongs to the Choose Milk Producers cooperative (SMP didn’t reply to a query about whether or not the farm is at the moment a cooperative member, and the farm couldn’t be reached for remark).Movies from the investigation present employees hitting cows with screwdrivers, knives, and sawed-off golf golf equipment, and in a single scene, a employee takes a rod with an enormous flame on the finish and brushes it towards cows’ legs as they’re being milked. At one level within the video, the ARM investigator asks a supervisor a few dairy cow he had simply shot: “Do you’re feeling regret for killing her?” The supervisor replies, “No! It’s why I reside on this nation, so I can kill these asshole cows.”Fairlife denied sourcing milk from the operation. Quickly after, ARM adopted milk vans from the power to a Fairlife processing plant in Michigan. ARM additionally recorded a dialog with a milk truck driver who stated he took milk from the farm to the Fairlife processing plant. Fairlife acknowledged that it had been contemplating bringing on the farm as a provider and that the milk cargo ARM noticed was merely a check run that was subsequently dumped and by no means entered Fairlife’s provide chain.The category motion lawsuit filed earlier this 12 months accuses Fairlife of mendacity about its relationship with the Arizona, Indiana, and New Mexico farms. “This conduct constitutes unhealthy religion, collusion, deception, and fraud,” the lawsuit states.ARM has requested the US Division of Agriculture and state agriculture departments to take a deeper look into Fairlife’s provide chain and the sample of animal cruelty, however no such inquiry has ever been taken up, in keeping with Richard Couto, ARM’s founder and CEO.Federal and state agriculture companies are “out to guard business and {dollars},” Couto advised me. “They’re not out to guard the animal.”Fairlife turned a uncommon success story in dairy — constructed on guarantees of doing betterAnimal Restoration Mission’s first investigation right into a Fairlife provider, launched in 2019, has since been seen over 19 million instances — greater than maybe every other farm animal cruelty video in historical past. It garnered widespread information protection, and several other Midwest grocery chains briefly pulled Fairlife bottles from their cabinets. Followers posted movies of themselves pouring Fairlife down the drain, vowing to by no means purchase the product once more.By 2022, Coca-Cola, the McCloskeys, their farm enterprise, and Choose Milk Producers settled a $21 million class motion lawsuit (separate from the one filed earlier this 12 months) alleging the businesses had falsely marketed their milk as coming from humanely handled cows.That wasn’t the way it was all purported to prove.Within the early Nineties, the McCloskeys — who on the time owned a big dairy farm in New Mexico — launched the cooperative Choose Milk Producers, differentiated by a promise of elevated transparency and better requirements that led to more healthy cows and cleaner milk.A couple of years later, they moved to Indiana and opened Truthful Oaks Farms, which is now one of many nation’s largest dairy operations, with an eye-popping 36,000 cows — what’s thought of a mega dairy. On the time, industrial animal agriculture was below rising scrutiny as investigations into manufacturing facility farms by animal rights teams gained media consideration. Quite than hunker down and ignore Massive Ag’s unfavorable publicity, the McCloskeys noticed a enterprise alternative in transparency — or at the least their model of it.In 2004, the McCloskeys expanded Truthful Oaks Farms to turn out to be what’s been referred to as an agricultural Disneyland — a farm-meets-theme park vacationer attraction that pulls greater than 100,000 guests yearly.“The farm was based out of necessity to counter the very loud, very well-funded, and sometimes, very deceptive voices towards fashionable farming and animal agriculture,” Sue McCloskey advised Meals & Wine in 2018.Right this moment, guests can take a sanitized tour of Truthful Oaks’s dairy and pig operations. The programming “makes an attempt to make the general public snug with the manufacturing facility farm,” Jan Dutkiewicz, a Vox contributor and assistant professor of political science on the Pratt Institute who went on the tour, wrote in 2018. Truthful Oaks, he added, deploys a “selective transparency that appears to carry out radical revelation — even because it hides overt and structural types of violence towards animals.”There are additionally interactive dairy, pork, and crop museums, a 25-foot tall mountaineering wall within the form of a milk bottle referred to as “Udder Heights,” and a “Legen-Dairy Drop MegaSlide,” two on-site eating places, and a Marriott resort.Guests to the Truthful Oaks Farm’s Pig Journey exhibit look out over the sows barn. John Luke/The Occasions/Related PressDairy cows driving a rotating milking machine at Truthful Oaks Farms. M.L. Johnson/Related PressThroughout their time at Truthful Oaks Farms, guests are inundated with messages that fashionable animal agriculture is sustainable and humane. “At Truthful Oaks, Mike is actually in a position to create a brand new actuality,” Frerick, the ag researcher and creator, stated in The Value of Milk, a brand new documentary sequence on the dairy business. “They constructed probably the most well-liked vacationer points of interest within the state of Indiana, filled with propaganda, to refute claims that industrial animal operations (CAFOs) had been merciless,” he advised me in an electronic mail.But the McCloskeys’ claims about what separates their farms and companies from typical dairy manufacturing facility farms have all the time been scant on specifics.For instance, Mike McCloskey has advised NPR that the truth that he’s fluent in Spanish has enabled him to higher talk together with his largely Spanish-speaking workforce, which has resulted in higher look after animals. Choose Milk Producers’s web site mentions its adherence to voluntary animal welfare pointers that had been developed by dairy business teams, which largely mirror normal business practices.Truthful Oaks Farms didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark for this story.“That is simply the one basic textbook instance of why self-policing simply fails. How will you even take the corporate at their phrase now to do higher?”— Austin Frerick, agriculture researcher and authorAfter Truthful Oaks Farms got here Fairlife. In 2012, the McCloskeys, by Choose Milk Producers, developed a partnership with Coca-Cola to distribute Core Energy, a milk-based protein shake made utilizing their ultra-filtration course of to reinforce the drink’s protein content material. Two years later, Choose Milk Producers and Coca-Cola launched the Fairlife model.Their timing was excellent. The protein craze was gaining steam, whereas cruelty investigations into manufacturing facility farms had turn out to be a frequent information story. Fairlife promised shoppers the whole lot: a low-sugar, lactose-free, high-protein milk beverage with a humane and sustainable sheen. Coca-Cola’s market dominance helped get Fairlife drinks into 76,000 US shops by 2017.The corporate took off, and the McCloskeys turned a optimistic story in an in any other case struggling business: During the last 80 years per capita fluid milk consumption within the US has declined dramatically, and tons of of 1000’s of small- and mid-sized dairies went below. Massive dairy producers just like the McCloskeys had been well-positioned to learn from the business’s structural issues.Within the years that adopted, Mike McCloskey landed on President Donald Trump’s brief checklist for agriculture secretary. Sue, in the meantime, was busy on the convention and media circuit, the place she often, and lovingly, referred to the couple’s cows as “our ladies.”“There’s a level of enterprise brilliance to them that you must admire,” Frerick stated. Neither of the McCloskeys got here from an enormous farm household, but their enterprise savvy, political connections, and advertising prowess, he stated, has made them “unquestionably probably the most highly effective dairy farmers in America in a lifetime.”We’ve turn out to be numb to Fairlife’s animal cruelty scandals It wasn’t lengthy earlier than Animal Restoration Mission’s first investigation revealed how the “ladies” had been handled within the McCloskeys’ dairy empire.Following ARM’s first investigation in 2019, Mike McCloskey launched an apology video, saying that Fairlife doesn’t tolerate animal abuse and would clear up its provide chain. But ever since, Animal Restoration Mission continued to launch new investigations into Fairlife suppliers and Choose Milk Producers members at an everyday clip, every with equally disturbing findings.Alongside the way in which, Fairlife eliminated humane care claims from its bottles, and earlier this 12 months, it took down a prolonged but obscure internet web page about its animal welfare commitments.In fact, nobody on the prime of those firms actively desires animals to be abused, however the continued investigations replicate a structural actuality of animal agriculture: Mass producing low cost animal merchandise is all however inconceivable to do humanely. Dozens of investigations into the US meat, milk, and egg industries have revealed that the continually rising demand for affordable animal merchandise — mixed with nearly zero authorized protections for farmed animals and captured regulatory companies — implies that effectivity and revenue are nearly all the time prioritized over animal welfare.“That is simply the one basic textbook instance of why self-policing simply fails,” Frerick stated. “How will you even take the corporate at their phrase now to do higher?” The story right here, he added, “is the failure of regulators.”By means of all of it, Choose Milk Producers and the McCloskeys have continued to prosper. All advised, Coca-Cola spent $7.4 billion to amass Fairlife, Bloomberg reported earlier this 12 months.And the general public shock and disgust that adopted the primary investigation into Fairlife six years in the past has since largely light into the background, whereas the model simply will get increasingly more well-liked.“The scariest factor from all these animal abuse scandals is it seems like that, with every extra scandal, the stress goes down,” Frerick stated. “This abuse is turning into seemingly a truth of life. I feel that’s type of an unsaid technique of Fairlife — it’s simply to trip it out so [people] turn out to be numb to it.”Fairlife, in spite of everything, has all the time managed to successfully foresee and meet the cultural second. It’s now reaping the monetary rewards of a protein fad that it anticipated lengthy earlier than its rivals. And though the McCloskeys as soon as promised {that a} bottle of Fairlife got here from humanely raised cows at a time when animal welfare considerations had been notably salient, the corporate has appeared simply as joyful to quietly shed its commitments to animal welfare after they had been now not handy.However Couto stated Animal Restoration Mission isn’t going away. “ARM is such a thorn in Coca-Cola’s aspect,” he advised me, “as a result of we’re by no means going to cease investigating.”You’ve learn 1 article within the final monthHere at Vox, we’re unwavering in our dedication to masking the problems that matter most to you — threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the atmosphere, and the rising polarization throughout this nation.Our mission is to supply clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to remain knowledgeable and engaged in shaping our world. By turning into a Vox Member, you immediately strengthen our capability to ship in-depth, unbiased reporting that drives significant change.We depend on readers such as you — be part of us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-Chief