A Sacramento-based nonprofit organization combating factory farming and animal abuse in the poultry industry is suing Alexandre Family Farm alleging “rampant cruelty” at their Humboldt and Del Norte County dairy operations.
Legal Impact for Chickens filed its lawsuit in Humboldt County Superior Court last week. The organization’s complaint contains the same cruelty allegations another organization, Farm Forward, outlined in a report released six months ago. In an Oct. 1 news release, Legal Impact for Chickens references that exposé and accuses the dairy of pouring table salt in cows’ eyes to treat maladies, dragging disabled animals across concrete and starving them.
“We saw the exposé and we saw that Alexandre was accused of pouring table salt into animals’ eyes and dragging cows across concrete and starving them,” Legal Impact for Chickens Executive Director Alene Anello told Redwood Voice Community News on Thursday. “Being familiar with California’s animal cruelty laws, we immediately thought to ourselves, ‘that is illegal, we need to stop them.’”
Farm Forward released its exposé, “Dairy Deception: Corruption and Consumer Fraud At Alexandre Family Farm” on April 11.
Following that report and an April 12 article in the Atlantic, Legal Impact for Chickens did its own due diligence to convince themselves that the allegations were true, Anello said. The organization also conducted a legal analysis to confirm that the cruelty allegations Farm Forward’s report raised are illegal in California, she said. Anello referred specifically to the accusation that the Alexandres poured table salt into a cow’s eyes.
In response to Farm Forward’s report and the Atlantic article, the Alexandres released a statement in April saying they were “targeted as part of an ongoing campaign by an animal rights activist group questioning the validity of humane farming certifications.”
On Thursday, a representative of Alexandre Family Farm declined to comment on Legal Impact for Chickens’ lawsuit, saying “[the Alexandres] wouldn’t comment on an ongoing legal issue.”
“Our mission is to farm in harmony with nature, honoring the Earth and all the animals under our stewardship,” said Sharon Egan, Alexandre Family Farm’s chief marketing officer, “We are recognized by Certified Humane for meeting precise, objective standards for how we care for our animals.”
Blake and Stephanie Alexandre and their family operate five dairies in Humboldt and Del Norte counties and grow an organic alfalfa crop in Modoc County, according to their website.
Legal Impact for Chickens’ complaint names Blake and Stephanie Alexandre and their son, Joseph Alexandre, as defendants. Joseph Alexandre manages the family’s dairies in Humboldt County.
According to the organization’s complaint, Legal Impact for Chickens is a California society for the prevention of cruelty against animals. While Legal Impact for Chickens targets the poultry industry, the SPCA advocates for the welfare of other farmed animals including cattle, hogs, sheep and ducks, according to the complaint.
Legal Impact for Chickens’ complaint relies heavily on Farm Forward’s exposé and cites the Atlantic article. It includes photographs of a cow with a ruptured eye being sold at auction, a disabled animal being dragged across concrete as well as dead calves from the family’s Ferndale operation — all images that appeared in the Farm Forward report.
After Farm Forward made those images public — and released a YouTube video summarizing the cruelty allegations against the Alexandres — the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and FindHumane.com stopped listing the dairy’s products on their websites, according to Legal Impact for Chickens’ complaint.
Other allegations raised in both the complaint and Farm Forward’s report include an accusation that an Alexandre Family Farm worker used a dirty pocket knife to cut off a sick cow’s teat without using anesthetic or providing a pain killer.
As for the allegation that the Alexandres starve its animals, the Legal Impact for Chickens complaint, and the Farm Forward report, cites a whistleblower observation from about 2019 of 40 cattle lying dead on the ground.
An employee explained to a whistleblower that the dairy had been without hay for several days and when a feed truck showed up roughly 800 animals “piled on top of one another in a desperate attempt to reach food.” The 40 dead cows had been trampled to death. Twenty others were severely injured, according to the complaint.
Legal Impact for Chickens’ complaint also cites a September 2024 interview where Blake Alexandre discussed his approach to managing land that doesn’t absorb water well. According to the complaint, Alexandre said he put 400 or 500 head of “bred heifers” on the land and forced them to eat it down.
The complaint doesn’t provide any further information as to who Blake Alexandre was speaking with or where that interview could be found.
However, Legal Impact for Chickens legal operations specialist Sage Max, provided Redwood Voice with a link to that interview, which was part of a Sept. 17, 2024 episode of the Roots & Ruminants Podcast.
In the podcast, Blake Alexandre tells the hosts that forcing his heifers to graze on that ground was a sacrifice for the animals because “it’s not ideal grass and their nutritional needs are less than, say, a group of yearlings.”
“Those heifers got thinner than I would like, but we set up a plan to graze them on that stuff for about two-and-a-half months,” he said. “And about halfway through the plan, I said that doesn’t work [and] we went out and cut half of it for hay and just cleaned up the field.”
On Thursday, Anello referred to that interview and said that to her, Blake Alexandre seems not to understand that intentionally depriving animals of food is concerning.
“It makes me worry that there’s still cruelty going on,” she told Redwood Voice.
Since Farm Forward’s exposé, Alexandre Family Farms has had its Regenerative Organic Alliance certification suspended, though Elizabeth Whitlow, Regenerative Organic Alliance executive director, told the Wild Rivers Outpost on May 3, 2024 that the suspension wasn’t due to either the report or the Atlantic article.
Regenerative Organic Alliance’s decision to suspend Alexandres’ certification was based on an audit and would allow the organization to proceed with a further investigation. Whitlow was not available for comment on the investigation’s status.
In an April 26 interview with the Outpost, Stephanie Alexandre called Farm Forward’s report a malicious attack. She said their employees were shocked at the allegations outlined in the report.
Vanessa Alexandre Nunes also told the Outpost that inspectors with California Certified Organic Farmers, which is accredited through the USDA’s National Organic Program, visit the farm annually. Other certification agencies also conduct annual visits and, sometimes, surprise investigations, she said.
A nutritionist and veterinarian inspects the Alexandres’ animals every two months, Nunes said, as do animal welfare auditors.
