This Thursday, Cesar Alonso will be speaking in Vancouver, after the premiere screening of ‘Milked’.
Vancouver, BC – On Thursday, November 24th, Liberation BC and P.E.A.C.E. (People Ensuring Animal Care Exists) join forces to present the Vancouver premiere screening of the award-winning documentary ‘Milked’, exposing the whitewash of New Zealand’s multi-billion-dollar-dairy industry.
Following the film, a discussion will take place with Cesar Alonso, moderated by local community organizer and activist Zoe Peled. Alonso is a Mexican immigrant, who worked at Cedar Valley Farms in Abbotsford, BC, where he witnessed abhorrent animal abuse firsthand. This is the same farm that made national news when undercover footage surfaced showing emaciated and limping cows, cows being beaten, kicked, and cows being shot and left to slowly die. Alonso did his best to rescue calves from the farm, and is now facing an upcoming legal battle with his former employer for wrongful dismissal, as a result of exposing the abuse of cows at Cedar Valley Farms.
He alerted management on multiple occasions about these incidents, which included mother cows being viciously beaten repeatedly. He saw a coworker attempt to kill a cow by shooting her in the head, but she didn’t die. The worker continued to dispose of her by lifting her with a bobcat loader and dumping her in a feed bunker with other dead animals while she was still alive. Alonso asked the owners why they didn’t kill them with lethal injection and they replied that it was too expensive. In response to his abuse reports, the farm’s owners told Alonso they’d speak with the aggressors in question but nothing changed. Months later on national news, we saw the kind of shocking abuse Alonso had tried to prevent.
Not only was Alonso wrongfully dismissed, the farm went so far as to wrongfully put on his migrant worker record that he had quit his job. (Alonso has evidence he was, in fact, fired). Alonso was also informed that his permanent residency application had been cancelled. When he requested the $2,500 he’d given them to cover fees related to the permanent residency application process, they refused. For this reason, Alonso is now involved in a wrongful termination lawsuit with Cedar Valley Farms to recover his financial losses.
Event proceeds will be directed towards Alonso’s legal fund, to help him pay his legal fees, and to help defend him from any further financial harm.
The event will be held at UBC Robson Square; further information and tickets are available here.
