A seventh former Plainville Farms employee has pleaded guilty to animal cruelty charges in a case that dates back to 2021.
Mitchell Eugene Buckley, 24, Aspers, Pennsylvania, entered the plea on August 16 in the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
His plea follows earlier guilty pleas entered by Kevin Lee Wagaman, Francisco Lebron-Cruz, Bryiant Perez-Paez, Bryce Washington, Juan Carlos Turi Baeza and Jose Enrique Turi Baeza. All seven men have been sentenced to 12 months of supervised probation. They are also all forbidden from holding a job in which the care of animals is involved.
The court action stems from criminal charges that were filed after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) circulated a video in August 2021. That video depicted scenes of turkeys being thrown, kicked and picked up by their necks.
Charges against five other suspects have been filed, with no court ruling being reached as of yet.
Shortly after the video surfaced, Plainville Farms announced it was cooperating with law enforcement agencies and had launched its own investigation into the matter. The result of that investigation was the termination of 13 employees, as well as the purchase of body cameras for a third-party animal welfare specialist to monitor all live operations by employees.
The company also replaced catching employees with a third-party vendor to provide catching services.
Previously part of Hain Celestial’s Hain Pure Protein segment, Plainville Farms was acquired in 2019 by a newly-formed investor group known as Plainville Brands LLC.
Plainville Farms, according to the WATTPoultry.com Top Poultry Companies Database, processed 90 million pounds of live turkeys during the past year. It ranks as the 15th largest turkey company in the United States.
