A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation provides a horrifying look into E6 Cattle Co. in Hart, Texas.

E6 Cattle rears calves for use on dairy farms, confining approximately 10,000 calves and subjecting them to lives of prolonged neglect and misery. For over two weeks in March of 2011, an MFA undercover investigator documented the operation's deplorable conditions and brutal mistreatment of animals.

MFA's hidden camera reveals:

• Workers bludgeoning calves in their skulls with pickaxes and hammers – often involving 5 to 6 blows, sometimes more – before rendering the animals unconscious
• Beaten calves, still alive and conscious, thrown onto dead piles
• Workers kicking downed calves in the head, and standing on their necks and ribs
• Calves confined to squalid hutches, thick with manure and urine buildup, and barely large enough for the calves to turn around or fully extend their legs
• Gruesome injuries and afflictions, including open sores, swollen joints and severed hooves
• Ill, injured and dying calves denied medical care
• The budding horns of calves burned out their skulls without painkillers

Upon reviewing the undercover footage, Temple Grandin, PhD, animal welfare advisor to USDA, declared: "It is obvious that both the management and the employees have no regard for animal welfare."

Colorado State University Professor of Animal Sciences Dr. Bernard Rollin also condemned the operation: "I urge everyone in a position of authority to serve notice to the world that this sort of behavior has no place in a society wishing to consider itself civilized. These people must be corrected with the full force of the legal system."

Dr. Armaiti May, a practicing veterinarian experienced in the care of farmed animals, echoed Dr. Rollin's sentiment, recommending that "charges of animal cruelty be brought against the workers involved and that the farm be shut down for cruel treatment of animals and lack of proper oversight of its workers."

The owner of E6 Cattle required his employees to bash in the calves' heads with a claw hammer, forcing them to condemn calves to a prolonged and horrific death. As Debra Teachout, DVM, asserts, "They feel every blow until they become unconscious." The American Veterinary Medical Association condemns the use of blows to the head as a means of killing young calves.

Following the undercover investigation, MFA alerted law enforcement authorities to violations of Texas anti-cruelty law at E6 Cattle, and presented a detailed legal complaint and meticulously compiled evidence of such violations to the Castro County District Attorney and sheriff. The evidence demonstrated an ongoing pattern of torture, unjustifiable infliction of pain and suffering on animals, and a failure to provide necessary medical care.

As MFA continues to expose the unconscionable cruelties of animal agriculture, and to diligently pursue justice by aiding prosecutions of animal abusers, consumers still hold the greatest power of all to end the needless suffering and death of calves – and all farmed animals – by adopting a compassionate, vegan diet.