A family-run farm in Sussex has received hundreds of death threats on social media after being mistaken for a US farm at the centre of an animal cruelty video. Fair Oak Farm in Mayfield, East Sussex, came under fire this week when Twitter, Facebook and Instagram users mistook it for Fair Oaks Farms dairy farm in Indiana. The latter has come under intense scrutiny after undercover footage released by an animal rights group revealed newborn calves being abused by employees. The video shows them being dragged along by their ears, thrown into plastic enclosures and being hit with milk bottles. But Ian Ledger, who runs Fair Oak Farm thousands of miles away, said his family have received at least 300 messages from angry animal-lovers who have mixed up the two farms. Many of the messages are abusive and threaten violence. “One person wrote ‘We’re coming for your throats’,” Ian told The Daily Telegraph. “My biggest worry is that, in the click of a finger, we will lose our reputation. “We’re a little family business and have built it up ourselves but it could be lost overnight.” Fair Oak Farm is an award-winning countryside retreat offering visitors the chance to meet a variety of rare breed animals – including lambs, alpacas, peacocks, peahens and chickens. Famous guests include US A-listers and UK celebrities including Made in Chelsea’s Binky Felstead. Ian, whose wife, three children and mother-in-law also live at the farm, said he is worried about the safety of his family. “It’s been going on about three days, starting on Twitter then moving to Facebook and Instagram,” he said. “We’re getting really serious death threats. This is a sign of the times and how easy it is for people to just send a death threat having read a post and not knowing the facts. You can see it’s mainly keyboard warriors but some messages are very serious. “People just don’t bother checking the facts before posting. I didn’t get much sleep the first night as I was responding to every single incorrect tag and putting a cute picture of our sheep up. “We didn’t want to do this because seeing our sheep is a special privilege for our guests, but we had no choice.” Ian said he contacted Instagram to report the messages but he only received an automated response around 12 hours later saying that their guidelines had not been breached. “There needs to be measures in place to stop this sort of thing happening rather than automated nonsense and box-ticking,” he said. “It’s a faceless response to something which needs some hands-on human intervention.”
