A Carroll County farmer indicted on charges of animal cruelty and selling bad meat said Wednesday that he plans to turn himself into authorities today.
Carroll Schisler Sr., 60, of the 2500 block of Marston Road, described his operation ? which allows customers to purchase farm animals to slaughter for themselves on his property ? as a family business taught to him by his father.
“Every animal [customers] buy is for religious reasons, and that is their custom,” Schisler said from the Baltimore offices of his lawyer, Roland Walker.
Schisler?s son, Carroll Schisler Jr., 34, was arrested Tuesday on the same 19 grand jury indictments that charge the pair with “failing to provide nutrition and food” to pigs, chickens and a cow, feeding garbage to swine and selling tainted meat.
The two face a maximum penalty of 10 years for the charges, said David Daggett, the county?s deputy state?s attorney.
Father and son have continued to sell pigs and goats to customers for slaughter without a license, said Nicky Ratliff, the Carroll County Humane Society director.
Authorities said the Schisler farm is polluted with dead animals.
“It was disgusting,” said Daggett, who visited the farm Tuesday. “There were dead animals, pigs, goats, chickens, a big field of bones, dead animals in the pond.”
Walker said many of the pigs found in and around the property are wild.
When state police came across skinny cows during investigations several months ago, he said, the situation existed because his client buys starving bovine from livestock auctions.
In 1990, Schisler Sr. faced animal cruelty charges that were later dismissed by a Carroll County judge, Ratliff said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture also has investigated the farm, and a hearing is scheduled for July 25 in federal court in Baltimore.
