Federated Farmers' Andrew Hoggard condemns video of farmer Patrick O'Connor rubbing face on cow's backside

A Federated Farmers member has come out with a scathing response to the video of a Rakaia farmer rubbing his face against a cow's faeces-covered bottom.

A video showing farmer Patrick O'Connor rubbing his face against the cow's backside then sculling an energy drink with his face covered in faecal matter has been viewed on Facebook nearly 680,000 times.

In the video, O'Connor drops a pun about getting "sh**faced".

O'Connor told the Herald he was not embarrassed about the messy act reaching so many people online, and that he was used to getting covered in cow dung during a normal workday.

Federated Farmers Dairy Industry Group chairman Andrew Hoggard was unimpressed though, labelling O'Connor a "Neanderthal moron".

"I was at the Local Dairy Industry Awards [on Wednesday] supporting my staff who had entered, which is quite a comparison to this muppet," Hoggard said.

"So yeah, it's really bloody disappointing that as an industry we are going to be linked to this Neanderthal moron.

"What the industry should look like is all the awesome young people who were on stage and had entered the awards last night, who take their careers seriously and are great examples of what can be achieved by young Kiwis. However, they aren't going to get anywhere near the coverage of this twat.

"He has probably gone and proved Bill English's point that there are some people who are just unemployable.

"As an industry we have a minimum standard for what we need from our staff on farm. This drongo falls well below that standard, and yet when people argue we shouldn't be employing migrant staff and should only employ locals ... well sorry, then we end up with more dropkicks like this, and if he has this little respect for himself, how much respect will he have for his co-workers, the farm animals, and the farm environment?"

Hoggard said he had three "fantastic, young Kiwis" working on his own farm, but when they weren't available, farm owners needed access to migrant staff who were of a higher standard.

O'Connor said the video was originally posted on a private Facebook page shared with friends, but was then leaked onto the Kiwi Az Bro page, where it has now had more than 8000 comments and more than 3000 shares.

"All the boys had a good laugh about it," he said.

"During normal milking I would get half my body covered in cow s*** anyway ... if it's five o'clock in the morning and you're not paying attention and a cow coughs and s***s, you're covered in it.

"There was nothing cruel at all, I felt anyway. There was no sexual act ... no deviantness."

Animal rights group SAFE spokesman Hans Kriek was not concerned with the video, saying there were more issues with the dairy industry as a whole to be worried about.