Sour about a work promotion, a Bulls dairy farmer spiked an entire milk vat by injecting a syringe full of penicillin into it. The whole content of the tank (18,000 litres, worth almost $11,000 in total) was contaminated, a Fonterra tanker soon realised. The dairy company assured that testing the milk for contaminants both at the moment of pick-up and at the factory is standard procedure. Penicillin is commonly used to treat sick cows, which are always milked separately from the main herd to avoid their milk being sent to the processing plant.
One of 1,700 Filipinos currently working in dairy farms, Oliver Rhys Hutchinson, 22, admitted a charge of intentional damage and told police he had done it to get back at his boss, knowing that it would have caused him a relevant financial loss.
Hutchinson was sentenced to two months’ community detention and will have to pay almost $11,000 in reparation for the milk.
