A farmer in Vestfold County, southwest of Oslo, was charged with week with aggravated cruelty to animals after more than 400 of his pigs starved to death inside his barn.
The tragedy at Stokke, not far from Tønsberg, was revealed last February, when a truck driver for farming cooperative Felleskjøpet arrived at the farm and was allowed to look inside the barn. He alerted the state’s food and animal authority Mattilsynet.
When Mattilsynet workers arrived on the scene they also had to put around 50-60 surviving pigs to death, to relieve their misery. The farmer has admitted criminal negligence in the case, but the reasons for it were unclear.
“This is an extremely serious case that will come up in the Tønsberg court,” prosecutor Hege Palm of the Vestfold Police District told news bureau NTB.
newsinenglish.no staff
