The largest lamb slaughterhouse in the U.S. is in Denver — but maybe not for long.

Superior Farms processes between 15 and 20 percent of lambs killed for meat in the U.S. each year. Its vast Denver slaughterhouse, located for decades in the Globeville neighborhood — one of the poorest areas in the city, with over 90 percent Latino residents — advertises sustainable, locally sourced, halal-certified meat production and an employee-owned business model.

Now, though, animal rights advocates are trying to upend that carefully constructed image by releasing new disturbing footage, obtained surreptitiously on the slaughterhouse floor.

The investigators behind the exposé hope it will aid efforts to pass a ballot measure in next month’s election that would shutter the facility. Organizers with the grassroots group Pro-Animal Future managed to get the measure, which would ban slaughterhouses within city and county limits, on the city ballot.

Along with pointing to checkered labor and environmental records that have led to over $200,000 in fines for violations in the last decade, animal rights advocates want the revelations about the conditions at the slaughterhouse to encourage votes for the ballot initiative.

The slaughterhouse footage, captured in July and August by secret cameras snuck into the facility by anonymous members of the Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, network, was made public on Wednesday in a report by the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, or AALDP, at the University of Denver.

The videos may show a range of animal abuses, routine cruelties, and instances that legal experts with the AALDP say could violate animal cruelty and humane slaughter laws. (The DxE investigators work anonymously to avoid tangles with law enforcement for entering the slaughterhouse and filming without Superior Farms’ permission.)

Videos shared with The Intercept prior to the report’s public release show, among other scenes, lambs with their throats slit hanging upside down and thrashing on the slaughter line; one animal with an internal organ that has been torn inside-out and left dangling behind it as it heads to slaughter; injured lambs being led to slaughter; workers laughing, spanking animals, and engaging in simulated sex acts with nearby machinery as lambs are having their throats slit; and the apparent use of so-called Judas sheep — adult sheep kept alive at the facility and used to lead the young sheep to slaughter.

“In general, that’s what you can expect to see in a slaughterhouse,” said Eric Davis, a retired veterinarian and professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, who reviewed a video reel provided by the animal rights activists. “This one is on the edge of badness, but it’s not going to be that much better if it’s running well.”

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Superior Farms, Bob Mariano, questioned whether The Intercept had verified that the footage was from the Denver location on the dates claimed by DxE. The Intercept was able to verify the dates from the footage’s time stamp. The Animal Activist Legal Defense Project attested to the veracity of the location, and footage taken by the investigators outside the facility aligns with images on Google Maps. The Intercept shared still frames from the obtained footage with Superior Farms and asked the company to confirm whether it showed their Denver facility. At the time of publication, the company had declined to identify the facility.

If successful, the Denver ballot initiative, Ordinance 309, would end all these practices by prohibiting the construction or operation of slaughterhouses in the City and County of Denver.

“Every workday, over 1,000 baby sheep have their throats slit at Superior Farms,” one of the investigators from DxE, who did not give their name, said by email. “This election cycle, Denver has a rare opportunity to put an end to this practice on an industrial scale within our city.”

The Superior Farms slaughterhouse is the only one currently operating in Denver’s city limits, so would be the only plant........

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