Two workers at the Rios Mink farm in Rosmalen have been sacked on the spot after secret footage emerged of them throwing live animals into a gas chamber.

The film was recorded by activists from Stichting Animal Rights and also shows how one man pinned a mink which had fallen on the ground with his foot.

Owner Jos van Deurzen told local broadcaster Omroep Brabant the men had worked for the company for years. ‘But this is unacceptable,’ he said. ‘The men on the video know how it should be done.’

At the end of October the organisation filed a formal police complaint against the company, arguing that thousands of mink were being neglected in dirty, excrement-filled cages.

Government inspectors are currently investigating, the broadcaster said.

The Netherlands has some 160 fur farms producing five million pelts a year and is the third biggest fur farming nation in the world behind Denmark and China. In 2013, a ban was imposed on the launch of new fur farms and the industry will have been phased out by 2014.