The Hen Report: “Lie, lie, lie. Deny, deny, deny” | Fairlife Dairy Investigation Shutters Factory Farm

Mariann Sullivan: And we have a special guest today, which we'll get to in a minute. I'm really, really excited for this update interview. But before that, I have a couple of announcements. As you know, uh, maybe, or maybe you don't know, Rising Anxieties is one of our podcasts, and it comes out on Tuesdays.

The Hen Report, this, this podcast comes out on Thursdays and our long form interview comes out most Fridays, only on the last Friday of the month, the Animal Law Podcast comes out. And we had an amazing animal law podcast interview this week about, they like to call Alligator Alcatraz, but I hate, and you know, what it's doing to the animals, aside from what they're doing to people.

Um, and our bonus for flock members comes out on Monday. And, and we're also on YouTube now. Just try to catch you up, you know, in case you have missed this 'cause we talk about this all the time, so maybe you haven't. Please subscribe on everything. Like wherever you listen, it really helps us out.

It gets us out to more people. And we're also, if you're interested in in-person contact, we're gonna have a booth at TAFA, Taking Action for Animals, in New Orleans this weekend, August 1st to 3rd, 2025, Vicki will be manning that. Vicki's actually from Louisiana. So it's old, old home week for her. So stop by and say hi to her and we'd love to hear from you.

But as I mentioned this week, Kudo, Richard Couto, also known as Kudo, of the Animal Recovery Mission. And I don't know whether if you, if you saw his interview, which if you haven't, you have to go back 'cause it's really unbelievable the work he's doing.

Um. We recorded that interview just at the moment this huge news was breaking about their recent investigation in New Mexico and he wasn't really able to talk about it in detail and he offered a little more detail on the flock bonus content. But still, we weren't able to get it all and we really wanted to cover that.

Uh, it's really, really important. So, welcome back to Our Hen House, Kudo.

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Thank you so much. It's uh, it's great to be back.

Mariann Sullivan: So, as I said, this was this place called Woodcrest Dairy. They always have these cute little names that make you think of like a little farm somewhere, and of course Fairlife milk and your campaign against it. And, you know, there might be some people who didn't see the whole thing. Can you just briefly tell us like what Fair Life is, what Woodcrest is, how Woodcrest fits into Fair Life and your campaign. And then we'll get to what happened, which is kind of monumental.

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Yeah, well, Fairlife milk really began I think back in maybe 2012, and it was developed by the McCloskey family who also owned Fair Oaks Farms, which is a high scale animal, uh, agriculture attraction, almost theme park, that's located right outside of Chicago in Indiana, a place called, uh, Fair Oaks, Indiana, where we went undercover.

Uh, basically what they do there is highlight the animal agriculture industry, specifically the dairy industry, on the incredibleness of the milking process and dairy production. How they treat the baby calves and, and cows. And everything is, is a lie, right? It's all false. So we went undercover there in 2000.

Mariann Sullivan: I just add too?

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Sure.

Mariann Sullivan: I've always. felt like Fair Oaks, not that I've ever been there, but is both a total lie, um, because the animals are treated much more harshly than that,

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: but it's also kind of an attempt to enculturate people to think of animals as cogs in the machine in a way. Because they really do have pig production, right?

Richard "Kudo" Couto: They they do. Yeah. So Fair Oak Farms is actually split in half and they have the dairy adventure and then the pig adventure. Um, so that's the two agriculture industries that they're highlighting, the dairy industry and the pork industry. We chose to focus on the dairy industry of Fair Oaks Farms, um, haven't really br brought to light the issue with the hog and the pig area of that company. Um, but we started in 2000 and I think, I wanna say 2019, um, timeframe, and went undercover in four of their operations. Didn't just go undercover in one of their dairy farms because they could of course just say, well, this is just happening in this, in just one facility, right? So we span out and go undercover in multiple.

To show that it's a, really a company philosophy and an a company issue and a industry issue, meaning that bringing in the dairy industry of how cruel they are to their animals in, in harvesting milk for our breakfast, lunch, and dinner tables. Right? What we found were so incriminating for Coca-Cola because Coca-Cola came in and they purchased, at the time, half of Fair Life.

So it was the McCloskey family and Select Milk Producers, which is a, a co-op. Uh, they owned half and Coca-Cola owned half. Coca-Cola slowly getting into the dairy industry, right? They saw profit and dollar signs, weren't specifically thinking about the animals and the cruel industry that they were venturing into. And thought that they were very well protected because they had Fair Oaks Farms, which was educating the public on their farms.

Right? So when we wanted undercover, we showed the harsh realities of the industry, of Coca-Cola, and of Select Milk Producers. And the McCloskey family and their dairy farms. Um. A lot came from that. Class action lawsuits, and they basically went in, I'm talking about Coca-Cola and, and the Fairlife Corporation and the McCloskeys, and revamped the entire company, making it quote unquote better for the animals, impossible for their to be any, any further cruelty in their supplying dairy farms. Because they had to ensure the consumer, right, uh, to start buying their milk again and the retailers to again, start stocking... and here's a bottle right here. Fair life back on their shelves. Because remember in 2019, hundreds and if not thousands of retailers took fair life off their shelves after our investigations. Uh, they were horrified and people were demanding.

Consumers were demanding that Fair Life take their products off their shelves. And this is actually one of the older bottles, and they had their promise on here, signed by Michael McCloskey on how incredible they were to their animals. And since we are so incredible to our animals, by the way, you're gonna purchase this milk for an extra dollar, a dollar 50 per gallon or per half gallon.

Because it's costing us so much capital to ensure that our cows are loved. Right? Well, we showed the complete opposite, which led to the class action lawsuit. So now they had to put cameras in anywhere that all of their supplying dairy farms, that there were animal and human interactions. They had to hire vet teams and animal welfare boards, and, you know, over the top training supposedly for all of their lower scale and top scale workers, uh, unannounced audits.

Investing, by the way, i'm now quoting Coca-Cola, close to 30 to $40 million to date since 2019, our first investigation. That's why people and retailers started putting Fair Life back on their shelves because they were insured that there was no more cruelty.

Well, we hit them with another investigation in 2023. Then recently we went onto two supplying dairy farms, Rainbow Valley Dairy and Butterfield Dairy Farm, owned by the DeJong family. The DeJong family used to be board of directors, uh, for Fairlife, right? Um, and one of the largest dairy producing families in the United States, if not the world.

And we showed horrific abuse towards the baby calves and the mothers. And this is after Fairlife, Coca-Cola, who since then purchased all the shares from the McCloskey family. They paid more. Well, Coca-Cola owns a lot of areas, right? Vitamin water and Tropicana orange juice and, and Dasani water.

They've really spanned themselves out. And they've purchased those companies that were already existing. Well, fair Life. This was their number one product. They paid more for Fair Life Milk and the label than they did any other product in Coca-Cola's history. So they're banking on, uh, an enormous return from Fair Life, and they're starting to get it.

It's not any, anymore, a billion dollar industry for them. It's a multi, multi-billion dollar company, and the Fair Life brand is actually faster growing product than Diet Coke. Incredibly enough. Which now leads us into the investigation we're gonna talk about today, which is Woodcrest. So then we went, when we stopped going undercover in Arizona and finished those cases, then we moved to Roswell, New Mexico, and that is titled Operation Fair Life New Mexico, Woodcrest Dairy.

And this is the actual report that I'm holding, that you can now find on our website, animalrecoverymission.org and go through this report. But this was sent to the sheriff's office and a lot of, uh, enforcement when we finished this case, which is pretty severe.

Mariann Sullivan: Can I just ask you who owns Woodcrest? was it a dairy they were contracting with was it owned by Fairlife or was it owned by the McCloskeys?

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Woodcrest Dairy is owned by, uh, a private family. The actual owner, the developer, the creator of Woodcrest was the co-founder of Select Milk with Michael McCloskey, and Select Milk remember, owned Fairlife milk.

Mariann Sullivan: It's All

Richard "Kudo" Couto: All connected. It's, it, it's one big family. Right. Uh, but now the children owned, um, Woodcrest and they owned it when we went undercover the past few months.

Mariann Sullivan: I guess that means it's a family farm.

Richard "Kudo" Couto: You got it. '

Mariann Sullivan: Cause the children own it.

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Yeah,

Mariann Sullivan: They call everything a family farm, don't they?

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Sure.

Mariann Sullivan: Alright, so you went in, you went, you found horrific abuse, which you can touch on, but don't, you know, don't tell us more than we need to know.

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Sure.

Mariann Sullivan: And, and what happened when You when you handed this, um, investigation in to... it was to local authorities?

Did you have any hope they were actually gonna do anything?

Richard "Kudo" Couto: You know, we we're always hopeful, and this is actually the first time that we stopped a case, developed the report and our video evidence, put it on drive and we sent it to the sheriff's office, uh, in Chavez County, which is where Roswell, New Mexico is. And we sent it to him a month prior to going public.

Now that's very uncommon for us with factory farms. We usually send the report and the evidence a few days if maybe even the same day that we go public with the case. Uh, this time was... we wanted to see what would happen if the sheriff's office actually had this case. No one was tipped off that they couldn't use the excuse of, well, you went public with this too soon now everyone's scattered.

There's no possibility for ma us to make arrests on the offenders. They don't have that excuse in this case. So they had this, this was sitting on the sheriff, the elected Sheriff's desk, and we didn't have any phone calls, no emails. They had no contact with The Animal Recovery Mission at all on this case, so we started calling and emailing them.

Their excuse was nothing has happened with this case because, well, these are just, these are just animals. Right? The problem is that the sheriff's office is in charge of upholding state law. And there were many felony, um, laws that were broken in this case, making it the duty of that elected sheriff and his staff to start making arrests and taking this case seriously.

They didn't do that. We then submitted this case to the Livestock Board, the New Mexico Livestock Board, who also have enforcement on these cases. They have now taken the lead on this case. And we are working very closely with them on this case. The problem is at this point, and we're talking about two months down the road now since, uh, the sheriff's had this in his hand, who the sheriff obviously tipped the dairy off to this case even before we went public.

Um, everyone's scattered. Right? So where in the world and how are these arrests actually gonna be made? These are migrant workers that are scared to death, not only of the sheriff's office, in this area because of what they did illegally to these animals. That's clearly on, on tape, right, and on video. But they're also scared of ICE now.

So now that they, they feel as though they're under a microscope, they're scared to death of being sent back to their originated countries because a lot of these workers at Woodcrest, if not just about all, uh, were illegal immigrants. Right? So they were scared to be deported, so of course they're not gonna work with enforcement and give any type of statement on this case.

Well, we let the sheriff's office do his thing long enough and they failed. So now are we going to actually see arrests from the New Mexico Livestock Board? Well, how? How is that even possible? Absolutely not. So now we're working this case with them, and basically, you know, we're treading water, right?

We're not expecting any, any type of case to come out of this. They're investigating 'cause they have to. But are there arrests? Is anyone gonna see any type of downfall for themselves because of what they did to the animals here, or no? But there are good things that have come out of this case.

We had a very large second class action lawsuit that was filed from Operation Fairlife, Arizona. That case, um, was filed in March, 2025. That entire class action lawsuit was actually revamped to include Operation Fair Life, New Mexico, Woodcrest Dairy. So now Fairlife and Coca-Cola are seeing a much, much stronger case, um, that is currently in court from this.

Um, so what other type of hammer came down here? Well, Fairlife milk of course, said we weren't taking milk from Woodcrest Dairy. How do we know that they were? While we were undercover, we followed the trucks, many trucks. The Fairlife plant, which is in Dexter, New Mexico, is eight miles from this dairy farm.

This is a Select Milk Producer's co-op. Okay. Um, in that area, Select Milk Producers dairy farms that they're associated with, that milk goes to their plant, which is the Fair life plant. Conversations with the owners, conversations with the managers, conversations with the milk drivers that have been hauling this milk for over 15 years from Woodcrest to the Fair Life Plant.

Uh, we have so much incredible evidence, but fair life and Coca-Cola, they are in the denial phase now. So lie, lie, lie, deny, deny, deny. And if there are retributions that come from that, uh, in the future, like such as lawsuits or whatever it is, we can possibly pay those out. But now they're looked, they know how damning the greater public would come down on them if the large, large sections of media covered this. And they haven't specifically because they're denying that they had anything to do with this investigation. What they said was months prior to us going in, they were taking the dairy, but overnight they just stopped. Right? That was their statement to the press. And some of the press actually actually believed it.

So what else has happened? Well, we're suspecting that Fairlife canceled the contract right after they had knowledge of this investigation. There's only really two places to bring your dairy in Roswell, which is a, a very large plant, owned outside of the Fair Life brand by another company and fair life. In that area, there's really nothing else. So it's, it's, it's probably certain that Fairlife canceled the contract. The other, uh, production company wouldn't take their dairy. And when that happens, a dairy has to close, rapid. Those cows have to be milked three times a day. They have to be. If there's nowhere to transport that milk to and actually sell it for profit, it's also extremely expensive to run a dairy farm.

So if you have nowhere to bring that milk and you're actually dumping it in the back, that company's gonna go bankrupt in days or if not a, a week or two. Right? So they have to shut down in a rapid form, which is exactly what they did. So the, the livestock board actually sent one of their teams out to look into the allegations of abuse.

And they didn't find one worker. They didn't find one worker, and they found a small handful of cows, not understanding what was happening here. Woodcrest dairy shut down. There is no.

Mariann Sullivan: It's just like, like it's kind of like an ama amazing combination of circumstances. 'cause when I first heard about this, I was like, how did they get the dairy shut down? Like going to the Livestock Standards Board. That's not gonna do anything in any state that I know of, but it was this, this combination of circumstances and your, your ability to really track everything to fair life.

It's almost as if you've used the fact that Fairlife has put this like patina of credibility on this milk against them by saying by... like that was the key. The government wasn't gonna do anything. The Livestock Standards Board wasn't gonna do anything. But because you had this class action lawsuit that could give a black eye to fair life, which is trying to present itself as like very fancy and really special that you were able to get this amazing result. And you know, we have a fair life plant just opening right outside of Rochester, New York, and I want you to come here and I want you to do the exact same thing to them! them

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Yeah. It's a big facility that's opening in New York.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: It's like you found a new way in. Because Coca-Cola decided it was gonna put this fancy face on dairy. You have found a way in to use that to reveal the truth.

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Yeah, and I'm, you know, I'm surprised Fairlife did what they did after our initial investigation in 2019, basically marketing themselves again as an animal welfare company, basically. Um, because of their new policies that they put in place, right? Did they not think that ARM was smart enough to go undercover in their supplying farms again? They, if not, these are...

Mariann Sullivan: They clearly didn't. They underestimate this movement all the time.

Richard "Kudo" Couto: think, I think they did. And that, and that's a big, big downfall of the president, of the executives of Coca-Cola and Fair Life, and their marketing department. How stupid are these people? Excuse my French. But it, it is comical. Um, so when we went undercover again, the abuse was worse than in 2019. The crimes in, in Roswell, New Mexico at Woodcrest were so horrific that you, you know, these animals were being tortured not because of trying to quote unquote discipline them, but everyone there, they were literally getting off on torturing these animals.

It was a normal daily routine where they actually had made, made their jobs fun by brutally torturing cows when they were in head gates. Um, a head gate is where, you know, a cow walks in, they put their head through two bars and closes and they can't move. Right? So they're stuck there, and that's when the torture really began for these mothers that were in labor, right?

They're about to have a baby and they're being beaten with wrenches and metal pipes, um, when they are giving birth. They were, they prior to contracting and the contracting process, so they weren't ready to give birth to their babies, the baby's legs were being chained and they were cranking the babies out of these mothers prior to contracting, prior to the birthing cycle. That was killing the mothers, it was killing the babies. Um, these people liked it. It was, it was an incredible thing to see.

Mariann Sullivan: Who knows what happens to people when they live in the midst of this kind of cruelty? It damages people in, in horrific ways, but I, I just think that, um, too often though, investigations and you, you were making this point that you couldn't go after the workers, but too often in our movement, I think the buck has stopped with the workers. Like, the owner of the company would do something like, oh my God, we had no idea this was going on. And the workers either would get deported or get, get charged and it would stop there. I mean, what's really amazing about this particular uh, particular investigation is that it went so far beyond the workers, it even went beyond this particular dairy and it went to the big, um, national company That is, that is proving over and over again that it is not possible to produce the product they're trying to sell, which is cruelty-free dairy. It's not possible.

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Well, now they know that right?

Mariann Sullivan: If it was possible, they'd do it.

Richard "Kudo" Couto: So, So, what, what's happened from this case as well, to your point that you just made is Fairlife, for the past five years, since our first investigation had been marketing themselves and reselling their premium milk as a animal welfare product because of Operation Fairlife, New Mexico, they have taken every marketing point, um, off of their website, off of their bottles, off of the internet. Claiming that they're an animal welfare, um, high standard type of company. Everything now overnight is erased and gone.

Mariann Sullivan: Wow.

Richard "Kudo" Couto: can no longer claim any of these animal welfare policies are in place and everything is perfect with our animals.

I don't think that you will ever, ever hear that from them ever again in false marketing. What's around the co, what's around the corner is that in part, they took this literature off there because we sealed the deal with ARM. Animal Recovery Mission sealed the deal with our investigation in New Mexico after Arizona and they know it.

Um, what they're gonna be facing in a federal court now with these three new investigations in different states, right, um, three completely different farms. Coca-Cola and Fair Life are in deep, deep trouble here. And we're not gonna be taking a plea deal. There are gonna be no plea deals here in this case, like there was in 2022, settling for $21 million.

This is going to go to court. We are going to be doing depositions. Um, there is going to be trial by jury and they're gonna have to face it and face the public. The Coca-Cola brand, the sixth largest brand in the world, in court here. They now know and well every ev many, many people now know, many people more are gonna know that they are now.

Coca-Cola is a habitual offender. This is now the ninth investigation. Nine out of nine, where we have uncovered felony, top tier felony animal cruelty in their supplying dairy farms. That's an impossibility. A hundred percent? No one's ever a hundred percent. That should show everyone the other outlying dairy farms, their, where they're harvesting their dairy from.

What do those look like?

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. Well, this is really powerful investigation, a really powerful result. And the, I'm glad you re-referred back to the legal case. 'cause that was obviously, that's a key part of all the factors that came together here to have this result. And of course, the result is only the beginning, um, in, in many ways.

But already there has been powerful, uh, a powerful result. So I'm incredibly grateful for you to, um, have come on again and tell us about this. 'Cause this was really, it is such an important part of the story of, of your interview that we weren't able to get to. So thanks so much, Kudo.

Jasmin Singer: I just, I wanna ask one more thing before we close, which is if you could wave your magic wand, what would the ideal next step be?

Richard "Kudo" Couto: The next step would be retailers to start wiping the shelves clean of fair life. Of people again, like in 2019, um, dumping out fair life and dairy in general, because this, this isn't just an outlying company, this is an industry issue, right? It's just not a fair life issue.

People need to understand what is actually going on in a dairy farm, where their milk and cheese and yogurt and, and all these other, you know, pro-dairy products, how they're being produced and the misery that goes into that. This is 2025. And there are better ways to do things. There are plant-based products that replace everything that's made from dairy.

It's healthier for, for the human body, better for the environment, and there's no animal cruelty. It's a, it's a win-win win situation. You know, I, I hate preaching to people and it's not really something that I regularly do, but dairy is a, is a different thing. There's so much cruelty and people out there have to be, they need to be aware of it.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much for all that you're doing. We're really grateful that you took the time again to talk to our listeners and our viewers and for all that you're doing. I mean, it really is what Mariann said, you found a new way in. And it's so refreshing because we, we, Mariann and I have been as, as you have, doing this for a long time, but we've been sort of on this end of the microphone for a long time and we see a lot of the same thing over and over again. And to, to see something like this is like it, it's, I wish it wasn't shockingly amazing, but it is. So thank you so much and for joining us, uh, on The Hen Report today.

Mariann, did you wanna add anything? You have smoke coming outta your ears.

Mariann Sullivan: uh, I, I just wanted to remind people to listen to the latest Animal Law Podcast, which I, I referenced, um, in the beginning, but I really wanted to emphasize it because it was with Elise Bennett, who is an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. And you know, everybody's heard about Alligator Alcatraz and the really devastating, um, things that are going on in the Everglades there, but nobody that I can figure out is talking about the unbelievable number of environmental laws that have been violated by that facility.

It's the Everglades, I

Richard "Kudo" Couto: Hm.

Mariann Sullivan: Billions of, literally billions of dollars have been spent to preserve the Everglades and what they're doing there right now, just this one fact. Um, incredibly endangered animals, they need the dark. One of the things they need desperately is the dark.

The light from this facility can be seen for 15 miles.

That's just the, you know, that, that's just the edge of the harm that is being done to animals. And there are laws. And, and so the Center for Biological Diversity is, is pursuing those laws. And, you know, let's just, let's just hope something comes of that.

And I also wanted to mention that we have an interview coming out on this Friday, following today's Hen Report. Um, and it's the latest in our series of Animal Policy Alliance interviews. And this time we're gonna be talking about some local legislative efforts to, not to get legislation, but to fight back against bad legislation.

And we'll have guests from Missouri, so you can imagine they got some bad legislation affecting farm animals in Missouri and also Connecticut. So lots of stuff going on at the state level, and I just wanted to remind everybody to tune into those interviews as well.

Jasmin Singer: I do wanna remind our listeners to like this episode on YouTube, even if you're not watching on YouTube, it'll help us since we're newly on YouTube and uh, to become a Flock member if you're so inclined, and if you have the ability to, which you can do at ourhenhouse.org/support.