A US animal welfare group is calling for new fire codes to protect farm animals after 18,000 cows died in a barn explosion this week.
The massive blast and subsequent fire took place at the South Fork Dairy Farm in Dimmitt, Texas on Monday, resulting in the largest known single-incident of cattle deaths in US history.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), one of the country’s oldest animal protection groups, called for federal laws to prevent barn fires.
“This [Texas explosion] would be the most deadly fire involving cattle in the past decade, since we started tracking that in 2013,” spokesperson Marjorie Fishman said.
There are no federal regulations protecting animals from fires and only a few states have adopted fire codes for barns, according to the AWI statement. Texas is not among them.
Around 6.5 million farm animals have died in fires in the last decade, most of them poultry.
Monday’s incident led to the deaths of nearly three times as many cows as are slaughtered daily in the US.
Videos posted on social media from Monday’s incident showed immense black smoke clouds rising up from the South Fork Dairy Farm as screams of dying cows could be heard.
While there were no human casualties, one dairy farm worker was rescued and taken to the hospital as officials worked to contain the fire.
The cause of the explosion remains unclear but Texas fire officials are investigating. County Judge Mandy Gfeller speculated that the blaze could have been caused by malfunctioning equipment, according to USA Today.
The cows were huddled together in a holding pen and waiting to be milked when the explosion occurred.
Most of the cows that died in the fire were a mix of Holsteins and Jerseys, representing approximately 90 per cent of the farm’s total herd.
The AWI has tracked barn fires since 2013 and established guidelines to prevent such incidents. These include performing annual inspections, having access to fire extinguishers, creating emergency action plans, completing annual fire safety training and having emergency lanes in structures, among others.
The AWI’s call for federal regulations to prevent barn fires is echoed by local residents and officials. Dimmitt Mayor Roger Malone called the fire “mind-boggling”.
“I don’t think it’s ever happened before around here,” Mr Malone said. “It’s a real tragedy.”
Renzo Sullivan, a Dimmitt resident, told local TV station KFDA: “It is kind of painful because... that’s kind of what we do here, and that’s how we get our money for like the city and all that. So that’s just a major drop for us.”
The South Fork Dairy Farm in Castro County is one of the largest dairy-producing counties in Texas with over 30,000 cattle, according to Texas’s 2021 Annual Dairy Review.
