PETA's investigation footage from a filthy Pennsylvania dairy facility that supplies Land O'Lakes continues to receive massive press coverage. All the coverage has prompted the Fortune 250 company to issue an official statement—one that only serves to highlight the profit-driven callousness and lack of concern for animals within the corporation and the dairy industry as a whole.

Jeanne Forbis, the director of communications at Land O'Lakes, said, "[W]hen state-certified inspectors do inspections at dairy farms they are inspecting for milk and equipment sanitation practices, not animal treatment."

Is that supposed to be the "excuse" for why the Land O'Lakes inspector didn't bother to note that cows were living in filth, without bedding or a clean, dry place for shelter? Or that lameness and mastitis were rampant? How about the fact that there were cows who were so debilitated and thin that they looked like skeletons with skin draped over them?

Frankly, the inspector didn't do very well on inspecting for sanitation either. Take a look at the video—animals are virtually swimming in a soup of urine and fecal matter. All Forbis's comment does is raise some serious doubts about the quality of the sanitation inspections that led to the approval of this facility.

Various agencies are now looking into PETA's allegations of abuse, as well as sanitation and food safety violations, against the dairy facility's owners. Abuse of animals in the dairy industry is nothing new, so please consider dropping cholesterol and cruelty-filled dairy products from your diet.

Posted by Heather Drennan

Today, PETA unveiled footage from our five-month undercover investigation of a filthy factory dairy farm in Pennsylvania that supplies milk to St. Paul–based Land O'Lakes, the largest seller of branded butter in the U.S.

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Our investigator documented abuse and neglect of cows and calves at the facility, including that cows who were in terrible pain and resisted standing were electro-shocked and jabbed with the blade of a pocket knife in an effort to force them to move and that sick and injured cows were left to languish—often so weak that they couldn't even get out of their own waste—for days and even weeks without veterinary care. In one case, workers were told to wrap an elastic band around a cow's gangrenous, infected teat in order to "amputate" it. The cow's condition deteriorated for 11 days before she finally died.

It is a violation of Pennsylvania law to neglect animals, deprive sick and injured animals of veterinary care, and deny animals clean and sanitary shelter. Charges against the farm's owners have been approved and filed by a local magisterial district judge. The factory farmers are innocent until proven guilty, of course, but they would face up to 90 days in jail and $750 in fines if convicted.

We have also called on Land O'Lakes to buy milk only from farms that meet our 12-point animal welfare plan, which would prevent much of the suffering we documented at this farm.

For those of you who can't stomach the thought of eating butter after watching that video, take a minute to tell Land O'Lakes to implement our 12-point animal welfare plan. Then check out one of the many vegan butter alternatives that are widely available. My personal favorite is Earth Balance margarine. It's 100 percent vegan and free of trans fat (and pus), and it tastes even better than butter. Best of all, it's also 100 percent free of cruelty to cows and calves.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

wildlifedepartment / CC
Hopefully, young hunters such as this one will be banned from hunting in Pennsylvania.

Last Friday, an 11-year-old Wampum, Pennsylvania, boy allegedly picked up his youth-model 20-gauge shotgun and shot his father's pregnant girlfriend as she slept. The boy, Jordan Brown, had received the gun as a Christmas gift from his father, who was reportedly teaching the child to hunt in the woods surrounding their rural home.

This wouldn't be the first time that a kid who had been schooled in the ways of snuffing out wildlife turned his gun on another human being—and it almost certainly won't be the last. Remember 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year-old Andrew Golden of Jonesboro, Arkansas? In 1998, they took the hunting guns belonging to Andrew's grandfather—who had taught Andrew to hunt—and used them to ambush their fellow students, killing four girls and one teacher. In her book, Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, Katherine Newman writes that the young killers "dressed in camouflage clothing, exactly as Andrew did when he went hunting. … From across the field, their classmates and teachers seemed less like the human beings they went to school with than like quarry to be killed."

In 2006, the Pennsylvania Game Commission announced the creation of the Mentored Youth Hunting Program, "to encourage more young people to take up hunting to increase hunter numbers." In the wake of last week's tragic shooting, we've written to the governor of Pennsylvania, urging him to ban all hunting by children under the age of 18. You can read our letter here.

Not everyone who stalks and kills animals will stalk and kill a human. But every time a person picks up a gun, aims it at another living being, and fires, it must deaden a piece of his or her heart. Children have a natural affinity for animals, yet we hand them guns and teach them to be killers. Can we be surprised, then, when these children direct that violence at others?

Posted by Paula Moore