The South Fork Dairy Farm — located near Dimmitt, Texas — lost 18,000 cows in what was determined by the Animal Welfare Institute to be the worst farm fire for cows since 2013, when authorities began tracking barn fires.
The fire killed roughly 90% of the farm’s herd.
Some of the surviving cows were injured and may have to be euthanized. The final death count may reach closer to 20,000 cows in total.
FACT-O-RAMA! Almost 6.5 million farm animals have died in farm fires since 2013, six million of which were chickens.
“Your count is probably close to that. There’s some that survived, there’s some that are probably injured to the point where they’ll have to be destroyed,” Castro County Sheriff Sal Rivera told local news outlet KFDA.
FACT-O-RAMA! Texas is the fourth largest producer of milk in the nation, after Idaho, Wisconsin, and California, and churns out roughly seven million tons of milk every year.
The milk cows were worth roughly $2,000 each, which means the financial loss will be in the millions of dollars.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Amarillo Region arrived the next day to help remove the dead animals.
Miraculously, no people were killed in the inferno.
JUST IN: 18,000 cows are now dead due to an explosion in Dimmitt, Texas.
Honest question: How does a dairy farm have an explosion so large that it kills 18,000 cows?pic.twitter.com/cQ66IYH3la
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 12, 2023
One person was trapped in the building and was rescued by firefighters. That person was then airlifted to a hospital almost 80 miles away.
“The magnitude of the fire and the amount of people that were here, we were very fortunate that it was less than what we had,” Sheriff Rivera told KVII. “We had just one injured it could have been a lot worse.”
The cows had been herded into a holding pen just prior to milking. The fire, which is still under investigation, started with an explosion in a nearby building and quickly spread to the pen holding the cows.
Photos of the fire can be seen here. WARNING: They’re graphic.
South Fork Dairy is one of the newest — and largest — dairy farms in Texas.
The fire is part of a disturbing trend of fires devastating the American food industry.
Last year, an Iowa farm purposely killed 5.3 million chickens by closing off the barn’s ventilation system and raising the heat to 104 degrees causing the hens to suffocate when avian flu was discovered in the egg-producing flock. A protestor referred to the grisly method as “horrifying.”
Social media was quick to point out that the fire seems suspicious.
🚨🇺🇸 18,000 cows killed during explosion in Texas🚨🇺🇸
American food production is under attack & continues to focus on meat & dairy.
These ‘coincidences’ will continue until you have no choice but to “eat ze bugs”https://t.co/IpA5JO3t1I
— Concerned Citizen (@cotupacs) April 13, 2023
There were more than 1,200 fires at our nation’s 2,500 food processing plants in 2022, a substantial jump from previous years.
Related: Update On Food Plants: More Fires, FBI Alert, One Off-The-Wall Explanation
What makes these food-related fires more suspicious is the left-leaning media’s eagerness to suggest that the fires are in no way suspicious.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member