A jury has ordered one of the nation’s largest producers of cattle feed to pay a pair of dairy farmers in Tillamook $750,000 in damages for poisoning their prize dairy cows.
The Tillamook County Pioneer reports that the trial, which wrapped up last month in Tillamook County Circuit Court, ended on a 10-2 verdict in favor of Neal and Nancy Kaste after food from Land O’Lakes Purina Feed decimated 140 of their milking cows.
The jury even wanted to surpass the upper limit in damages but the judge capped the maximum award at $750,000 plus attorneys’ fees.
Land O’Lakes essentially poisoned the Kaste’s herd by allowing a salesman who was not trained in animal nutrition to adjust the formula of feed sold to the Kastes, upping the amount of copper in the feed to six times the required level, and taking out needed phosphorous. As a result, the cattle were slowly poisoned by the excessive copper, and because of the lack of phosphorous, the cattle’s bodies began feeding on the phosphorous in their own bones.
“These cows were literally dying on their feet,” said Anne Foster, one of the Kaste’s attorneys. “Dairy farmers are close to their cows. The Kastes had names for all of them. They began watching their cows get sick and die before their eyes, and at first they didn’t know why.”
The feed almost ruined the family, the report says.
The Kastes began purchasing feed from Land O’Lakes in November 2005, unaware that it contained dangerously high levels of copper. Shortly after, their cows started to produce less milk and appeared sick. Over the next two years these problems worsened. By the end of November 2007, many of the Kastes’ animals started dying.
Source: Oregon Live
