As if US human haters successfully ban foie gras and pig gestation cages wasn’t enough now an Italian pro-animal group is targeting mozzarella cheese made from buffalo milk. The group, named Four Paws, put out a video showing some very bad conditions the buffalos featured were in. According to Deutsche Welle:

Buffaloes with open wounds living in very small pens full of their own excrement. Calves being killed by a hammer blow, because they don’t produce milk and are therefore considered useless. Animals that go thirsty because there’s not enough water for them.

However, the conditions the buffalos are does not speak for the majority of buffalo farms. Some farmers were quoted as saying:

Cesare Iemma owns one of the biggest buffalo farms in Pastorano, a small village 50 km north of Naples. He has 1800 animals and produces his own mozzarella on site. He shrugs his shoulders as he watches the video. “I think that in every sector, whether it’s cows or buffaloes, there are people that work in one way and people that work in another,” Iemma says. “But this is not my reality.”

Iemma’s farm is 200 hectares large, with 13 stables and four large meadows containing pools of water. His buffaloes have enough to drink and don’t stand in their own excrements either.

“On this farm all animals, after the morning milking session, around 10am, have the possibility to go outside on the meadows and have a bath,” the farmer says, adding that the water is changed frequently. “After the afternoon milking, the animals have to stay inside the stables, but in the mornings they can wander around freely.”

Iella’s farm is in the province of Caserta. 50 percent of all mozzarella di bufala, or ‘white gold,’ as people call it here, comes from Caserta. In total there are around 600 mozzarella cheese factories and buffalo farms, and it’s a 500 million euro business.

I do not condone the conditions the buffalos featured in the video are in nor do I make excuses or white wash the awful manner in which they were treated. It is obvious, however, that Four Paws found a farm where buffalo conditions were terrible and attempted to slander the entire industry as a back-handed attempt to prevent the milking of buffalos. If the Italian government decides to regulate buffalo conditions it could drive up the price and make buffalo mozzarella cheese more expensive. Another successful attack on human’s food supply.