Audio By Carbonatix
Cody Carlson had no way of preparing for this moment. He was a Manhattan kid, days removed from working as an analyst for a business-intelligence firm, where he scrutinized corporations and their executives.
Now he was standing in a bleak barn at New York’s largest dairy farm.
There was a medieval feel to the place. Cows were wedged head-to-tail in pens carpeted with their own waste. The air was an acrid blend of urine, manure and chemicals. Some animals were left unattended with open sores that leaked puss. Others lay dying in pens, too sick or weak to stand.
“It’s incredibly overwhelming,” Carlson says. “Your brain can’t process seeing this many animals crammed together in one place.”
His first job, technically speaking, was to repair the mechanism that pulled manure from the barn.
His real job: covertly filming it all for Mercy for Animals.
As espionage goes, it was easier than infiltrating a Pizza Hut. Experience told the Los Angeles, California-based animal-rights group that it could send an undercover operative to a factory-style farm anywhere and it was certain to find abuse.
Carlson had simply been told to find a job in upstate New York. While the work requires punishing labor while surrounded by stench—all for the princely sum of $8 an hour—it isn’t like spying on North Korea. Two days later, he was hired by Willet Dairy.
His hidden camera caught employees kicking and shocking animals that wouldn’t bend to their will.
