Animal Welfare Lawsuit Against Ferndale and Del Norte Dairy Giant Alexandre Family Farm Moves Forward

Alexandre Family Farm products occupy multiple shelves at the North Coast Co-op in Eureka, including A2/A2 cream top organic whole milk, half and half, kefir and yogurt, marketed under a “Local” designation. [Photo provided by reader]

The milk you buy at the North Coast Co-op or from Whole Foods might come from a local dairy operation that is currently fighting a court battle over allegations of animal abuse. Local dairy industry giant Alexandre Family Farm sells multiple varieties of milk, yogurt, kefir, and eggs — products that are sold at major grocery chains in all 50 states — under the banner of organic and ethically produced. 

Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC), a Sacramento-based nonprofit that uses civil courts to enforce California’s animal welfare laws, has been suing the farm since September 2024 over allegations of systematic animal cruelty. Despite the name, the organization represents cattle and other farmed animals as well. 

The Alexandres have denied the allegations laid out in the civil complaint filed by Legal Impact for Chickens. Their attorneys have described the lawsuit as legally flawed and the underlying investigation as a coordinated attack by animal rights activists.

Alene Anello, President of Legal Impact for Chickens, offered a statement following the judge’s ruling in favor of the Farm. Anello told Redheaded Blackbelt by email, “Companies aren’t above the law. California has laws against animal cruelty,” adding, “we intend to make sure that Alexandre Family Farm follows those laws.”

What The Atlantic Wrote

The Humboldt County lawsuit grew out of a national investigation reported on by The Atlantic in April 2024. Reporter Annie Lowrey, working with the animal welfare nonprofit Farm Forward, spent months documenting conditions at Alexandre Family Farm through whistleblower interviews, hundreds of videos, photographs, and firsthand observation, according to court records and the Atlantic’s own reporting. 

A cow at Alexandre Family Farm is shown in a California Department of Food and Agriculture video about dairy operations and water sustainability. [Video by California Department of Food and Agriculture.] 

When a cow developed eye cancer (a common condition in dairy cattle) the response described in the Atlantic as well as in the litigation was not treatment or humane euthanasia, which is the more common industry response, according to whistleblower accounts. According to the allegations, workers glued, a piece of old clothing as an eye patch over the animal’s eye and send the cow to auction.

A Farm Forward representative was present at the Humboldt Auction Yard in Fortuna when one such animal, referred to in court documents as Cow 13039,  was sold to a bidder. 

Here, an image featured in the LIC Complaint allegedly shows cow #13039 with an eye patch. 

When the denim eye patch was removed, the cow’s eye had ruptured, and a veterinarian who reviewed footage of the scene concluded the animal likely had cancer, that its eye had subsequently bulged, ruptured, and become infected — and that the patch itself had made things worse. That repeated scenario is only part of what the civil lawsuit alleges.

According to allegations described in detail, drawing on whistleblower accounts compiled by Farm Forward, the lawsuit alleges that the “cruelty” went well beyond eye patches and lack of medical treatment.

LIC’s lawsuit describes a 2019 incident in which Alexandre ran out of hay — allegedly because it had stocked more animals than it could feed and because, as written in the complaint,  “because of Alexandre’s failure to pay for grain.”

According to the complaint, a feed truck finally arrived after several days, at which point roughly 800 hungry cattle rushed and piled onto one another in a desperate attempt to reach the food. As a result, the suit asserts that “[o]ver 40 animals died and approximately 20 others suffered severe injuries.” 

In a separate incident, an estimated 80 pregnant cows were so malnourished they could not give birth. Another incident described by LIC alleged that “approximately 80 of Alexandre’s pregnant cows were too skinny to give birth to their large calves,” and that “Alexandre staff had to kill all 80 heifers and their 80 unborn calves” as a result.

In a September 2024 podcast interview quoted in the lawsuit, co-owner and founder Blake Alexandre described his approach to overloaded land, saying to the Roots + Ruminants podcast hosts, “We gotta send the cows out hungry enough to eat everything and nibble all the weeds and consume them.” 

LIC cites this as evidence that management viewed deliberate food deprivation as an accepted business practice.

Here, an image featured in the LIC Complaint allegedly shows a living heifer being moved with heavy machinery.

Other alleged practices included cutting off a sick cow’s teat with a dirty pocket knife and no painkiller, dragging disabled cows across concrete using heavy machinery while employees watched, confining calves in cramped, unclean hutches for up to 21 weeks — a stint well beyond industry norms — without outdoor access. Another claim of abuse detailed in the complaint stated that “Alexandre allowed the horns of over 800 of its cows to grow for approximately three to four years” before having to saw the horns off. LIC asserted to the court that “Alexandre failed to use a veterinarian or veterinary equipment for this process” but instead, said that “Alexandre staff themselves carried out the process using a Sawzall-style reciprocating saw, a common piece of construction equipment.” This was also allegedly done without anesthesia “causing the animals to stop eating from the trauma,” the complaint reads.

The suit also alleges that Defendant Stephanie Alexandre personally sewed denim eye patches to conceal animals’ cancer from auction buyers, and instructed staff to lie to an organic certifier about the purpose of spraying cows with diesel fuel. 

According to the suit, so many cows die at Alexandre that the operation sometimes maintains pits containing 60 to 70 decomposing animal carcasses at a time. The complaint states that Alexandre “forces its live cows to eat grass in the same field where their fellow herd mates’ dead bodies are decomposing.” The rotting carcasses attract flies — and Alexandre’s solution, according to the lawsuit, was to use backpack sprayers to douse the living herd with diesel fuel.

Spraying livestock with petroleum products is not an approved organic practice. Under federal organic regulations, an operation cannot use substances on its animals that aren’t permitted under organic standards — and diesel fuel is, unsurprisingly, not on that list.

According to the complaint, when an organic certifier announced an upcoming inspection visit, Defendant Stephanie Alexandre instructed staff to lie. Specifically, the suit alleges, “she instructed staff to lie to an organic certifier about the purpose of backpack sprayers that Alexandre used to spray down the entire herd with diesel fuel.” The farm’s account, according to the complaint, was that the sprayers were being used for a mundane and entirely legitimate purpose — preventing farm machinery from rusting. A certifier who is shown workers carrying backpack sprayers and told they’re used on farm equipment has no obvious reason to look further.

The complaint attributes this allegation to whistleblowers — former employees and ranch workers who, according to the suit, were present when the instruction was given. It describes the diesel spraying as part of a broader pattern, stating that “Alexandre dishonestly presents itself as an organic dairy to the public, despite violating organic standards,” and that the company “has cultivated a reputation within the dairy industry for disregarding regulations.”

The dead cow pits themselves are also addressed directly in the complaint. “So many cows die at Alexandre that the company sometimes has pits with 60 to 70 dead cows,” reads the lawsuit. 

Whistleblowers had photographed hutches containing dead calves — with more than a dozen found dead on a single day at Alexandre’s Ferndale location, according to the complaint — and documented a pile of cattle carcasses kept approximately 100 yards from where Alexandre confines its living calves.

Here, a composite image featured in the LIC Complaint allegedly shows “five-to-eight different dead calves found on a single day at defendants dairy located in Ferndale, Ca.”

It further alleges that multiple banks were deceived about how many cattle the farm actually owned, with staff moving animals between properties to artificially inflate the apparent herd size before inspections. The bigger the operation, the bigger the financial support. 

Alexandre has not specifically addressed these allegations in court filings. As with every other claim in the lawsuit, the company’s response was a general denial.

Pressure for Organic Certification

Alexandre Family Farm markets itself as an organic dairy. Its products carry certifications from the California Certified Organic Farmers organization (CCOF), and prior to the Atlantic’s reporting, carried other certifications as well. For consumers, those labels are an official signal that animals were treated humanely and that the food they’re buying meets higher standards.

The LIC lawsuit highlights a tension embedded in organic certification rules — one that critics say can create incentives to withhold medical treatment from sick animals.

Federal regulations governing the USDA’s National Organic Program are explicit. An organic livestock operation must not “sell, label, or represent as organic any animal or product derived from any animal treated with antibiotics.” In other words, the moment a dairy cow receives antibiotics, her milk can no longer be marketed as organic — and neither can she. The rule exists to prevent antibiotic overuse in industrial farming and to ensure consumers receive products free from substances not permitted under organic standards.

In practice, however, that rule puts a farmer in a position to have to choose between profit loss and gain by pain. 

Because, if an animal gets sick and the most effective treatment is an antibiotic, administering it means the animal loses its organic status — and the premium price that comes with it. The rule doesn’t prohibit treatment — it simply means a treated animal can no longer be marketed as organic. There’s a loss of profit to the farmer every time a cow is treated medically for disease. 

The lawsuit claims that AFF resolved this tension by simply not treating sick animals — keeping them in the herd, milking them when possible, and then selling them at auction when they were no longer productive, despite those animals suffering from conditions that were described as unfit for transport by a veterinarian who reviewed footage of the farm. 

Federal organic rules are explicit on this point: an operation must not withhold medical treatment from a sick animal in order to preserve its organic status, and euthanasia must be available for animals in pain. 

The suit alleges Alexandre violated both requirements.

After the Farm Forward investigation was published, multiple certification bodies acted. The Regenerative Organic Alliance — a higher-tier certification beyond the USDA organic standard — condemned Alexandre’s “wrongdoings” and suspended the farm’s certification based on its own inquiry. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals removed Alexandre products from its “Shop With Your Heart” guide. Certified Humane, another third-party certifier, temporarily dropped Alexandre from its list.

The Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance, an industry organization that had previously published a promotional piece on Alexandre, publicly called the documentation of abuse “devastating” and said the investigation showed “so many scenes that should never happen” at any dairy.

Walt’s Wholesale Meats, a company that processes dairy cows for human consumption, stopped accepting Alexandre animals entirely. At least two grocery retailers — Providore Fine Foods and Luke’s Local — also stopped carrying Alexandre products.

According to Farm Forward’s timeline of the investigation, as of March 2026, Alexandre had begun using the “American Humane Certified” mark — a certification described by Farm Forward as significantly weaker than the farm’s previous certifications. 

Now, Alexandre Family Farm finds itself in the company of the most prominent American Humane Certified businesses — conventional factory farm corporations Butterball and Foster Farms.

Legal Fight Over Secrecy

Alexandre Family Farm has lost most of the major procedural challenges in this case, though it has now secured wins on two evidence-related motions.

On May 27, Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Timothy Canning issued a ruling ordering five government agencies — including the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office, and Humboldt County Code Enforcement — to produce any records they hold involving animal abuse or animals owned by Alexandre Family Farm (AFF). 

The Farm’s attorneys spent months fighting to block that disclosure. They lost on every argument… until last week.

June 5 brought good news for the Farm, and a setback for LIC. 

Blake Alexandre, co-founder of Alexandre Family Farm, seen here in a frame from a California state agency promotional video. [Video by California Department of Food and Agriculture video.]

An early attempt to have the lawsuit thrown out before trial was denied in a ruling that affirmed Legal Impact for Chickens’ authority, as a California society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, to bring civil enforcement actions under state animal welfare law.

Alexandre’s lawyers then took the unusual step of petitioning the California Court of Appeal directly, asking the appellate court to order the Humboldt County Superior Court to dismiss the case. The Court of Appeal denied that request. The case then returned to Humboldt County Superior Court.

When Alexandre’s attorneys filed their response to the lawsuit in June 2025, they did not directly dispute any specific allegation. Instead, Alexandre’s lawyers filed what is called a general denial — a legal response that basically says “we disagree with all of it” without having to explain why or offer an alternative account of events.

Along with that blanket denial, Alexandre’s legal team raised 23 affirmative defenses — any one of which, if accepted by the judge, could end the case before a jury ever weighs the evidence. Rather than directly disproving the allegations, affirmative defenses give the court reasons why a case shouldn’t proceed at all. 

Among the farm’s most significant legal arguments are that Legal Impact for Chickens lacks the authority to bring this kind of lawsuit in the first place, and that a civil court — the kind that handles disputes between private parties — shouldn’t be the venue for enforcing what are, technically, criminal animal cruelty statutes. If Alexandre succeeds with an affirmative defense argument, the case could be dismissed without a judge or jury ever weighing the underlying evidence of what happened to those animals.

So far, the case filed by LIC has survived multiple attempts to shut it down. 

The evidence-gathering process has since become the central battleground. Legal Impact for Chickens served subpoenas on five government agencies earlier this year, seeking any records those agencies hold involving Alexandre animals or alleged animal abuse at Alexandre properties. 

None of those agencies – including the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, Humboldt County Code Enforcement, the County Department of Health and Human Services, the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office, and Del Norte County Code Enforcement – attempted to block the information request. The only party that fought to keep the government records secret was Alexandre Family Farm itself.

Alexandre’s attorneys argued, among other things, that the records weren’t relevant, that the lawsuit had no legal basis to proceed at all, and that the agencies’ internal files were protected by government privilege. 

Judge Canning rejected each argument. In his ruling, he found the requested documents “directly relevant” to the core allegations — underfeeding cattle, denying veterinary care, and sending abused animals to auction. 

However, June 5 brought a different, favorable outcome for the farm. Two motions filed by Alexandre’s attorneys were both granted – one protecting their auction records, and one asking LIC to provide additional information to AFF’s lawyers.

500 Pages Sealed

The first ruling protected more than 500 pages of AFF records produced by the Petaluma Livestock Auction Yard and the Humboldt Auction Yard in Fortuna in response to earlier subpoenas.

According to Alexandre’s attorneys, both auction yards had separately complied with LIC’s requests for records without designating any of the documents confidential. The owner of Petaluma Livestock even personally called the plaintiff’s attorneys to confirm receipt and expressed no concern.

Alexandre’s attorneys then moved to have those same records classified as “Attorney Eyes Only” or “Confidential,” arguing they contain proprietary business information and trade secrets related to herd management.

Judge Canning agreed, and the auction yard records are now designated confidential — despite LIC’s contention that the auctions themselves are not shielded from the public.

The second motion granted that day required Legal Impact for Chickens to provide more complete responses to 65 questions drafted by opposing counsel. Alexandre’s attorneys had argued that LIC’s responses provided so far remained “deficient” and “not code-compliant in multiple respects.” The court agreed, and ordered LIC to answer other routine questions used by lawyers to determine information from the other party, related to the accusations on the table. 

The June 5 rulings did not address the underlying allegations. Whether the farm’s cattle were systematically abused, denied treatment, and sold at auction while suffering — those questions remain before the court.

With government agency records now ordered to be produced, what those files contain is not yet known — whether they corroborate the whistleblower accounts and videos that formed the basis of the lawsuit, or shed new light on law enforcement’s prior knowledge of conditions at the farm, remains to be seen.

Alexandre at The Podium

Alexandre Family Farm has cultivated a public image built around transparency, humane treatment, and environmental stewardship over the years. The dairy company has multiple locations in Humboldt County, including in the Ferndale area, as well as its principal location in Del Norte County. The farm’s website markets its dairy as produced with high animal welfare and environmental standards.

Its website states, “We prioritize transparency in everything we do,” and describes the company as advocates for “better animal welfare laws and public policy.” Co-founder Blake Alexandre has spoken publicly about the farm’s commitment to animal care, and the operation has appeared in national media as a model of regenerative agriculture. That image has been marketed by the company to consumers, certification bodies, retailers, and, most recently, federal officials in Washington.

In December 2025, while this lawsuit was actively proceeding in Humboldt County, Blake Alexandre stood at a USDA event alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins. 

Blake Alexandre at the USDA event December 2, 2025. [screengrab from USDA video]

Blake Alexandre took the podium after being personally introduced by Secretary Rollins. “I’ve kind of carried this load on my shoulders to attempt to help spread the message across the country to conventional farmers and organic farmers alike,” he told those gathered, describing regenerative farming as “simply farming in harmony with nature, in the way God intended.” He noted that his family’s farm was the first certified regenerative dairy in the United States.

There is no indication that Alexandre Family Farm received a specific grant from the program. The $700 million is being distributed through existing USDA conservation programs — the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program — available to any qualifying farmer. 

Not everyone found the symbolism of AFF at the USDA podium appropriate. Andrew deCoriolis, with the animal advocacy group Farm Forward — the organization whose investigation of Alexandre helped form the basis of the Humboldt County lawsuit — offered a pointed critique. “I think they’re bad spokespeople for what is otherwise a very important potential movement in agriculture,” deCoriolis told Jefferson Public Radio.

What the USDA Already Knew

Before Blake Alexandre ever took the podium at a USDA press event, the agency he stood alongside had already investigated his farm…and found it wanting.

A USDA investigation, prompted by Farm Forward’s documentation and conducted through the agency’s agricultural marketing service, substantiated multiple allegations against Alexandre Family Farm while others were deemed “unsubstantiated” and described what it found as “systemic failures” in the farm’s operations. 

The USDA’s findings were split, but resulted in a compliance review and surprise inspection. 

As a result of the USDA’s intervention, the report noted that “Alexandre changed multiple practices and procedures, trained staff, hired an animal welfare consultant and corrected all noncompliances,” as reported following a surprise inspection visit. 

Rather than facing penalties, Alexandre entered into a two-year settlement program requiring additional oversight and monitoring of the farm’s practices.

The violations Alexandre admitted to as part of that settlement are striking in their specificity. Those admissions to the USDA echoed many of the allegations described in the LIC complaint. Those practices acknowledged by AFF in the federal investigative record included dragging cows using hip-clamping machinery, removing horns without pain relief, cutting a teat from a cow suffering from mastitis, spraying a diesel fuel mixture on live animals to repel flies, allowing animals to go without feed, and animals dying from trampling. 

“The administration chose as its poster child a dairy that markets itself as raising animals ‘in harmony’ — even though a USDA investigation confirmed multiple violations of organic and animal welfare standards,” said Matthew Dominguez, U.S. executive director of Compassion in World Farming, following the December announcement in a statement to The New Lede.

The USDA did not respond to requests for comment on why Alexandre was selected to appear at the event.

What Comes Next

The next court hearing in the case is June 29, when Judge Canning will assess whether LIC has complied with the court’s order to provide more complete records and information to AFF’s lawyers as part of the evidence-gathering phase of the lawsuit.

Local counsel for Legal Impact for Chickens is Janssen Malloy LLP in Eureka. The farm is represented by the Harland Law Firm in Eureka. Attorneys representing Alexandre Family Farm have not responded to a request for comment as of publication. 

Legal Impact for Chickens President Alene Anello provided a statement in direct response to Redheaded Blackbelt’s inquiry condemning Alexandre Family Farm’s position that records of public auctions contain proprietary business information worthy of legal protection. 

Ryan Hutson is a freelance journalist in Humboldt County writing for Redheaded Blackbelt. Reader support helps fund this independent reporting.