Christina Schulze Föcking, newly appointed agriculture minister for Germany’s largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, has been accused of mistreating animals on her family farm.

On Wednesday, German TV Show Stern TV (Star TV) aired footage of injured animals, animals without access to water and recordings of devices showing ammonia concentrations at double the legally allowed limit. The footage was filmed undercover by animal rights campaigners on Schulze Föcking’s family pig fattening operation between March and June this year.

Schulze Föcking’s husband, who manages the farm, told reporters that there had been illnesses on the farm and pigs had had greater potential for aggression than previous batches, which required “extensive actions for the wellbeing of the animals.” He said that of 940 piglets brought to the operation in March, 31 were culled or died by early July.

Farm manager Frank Schulze Föcking took issue with the activists for filming undercover on the farm, saying that he did not give consent for the recordings.

Responding to the accusations herself, Christina Schulze Föcking, a member of Angela Merkel’s leading Christian Democrat party, said her farm had released and open and detailed statement.

Green politician and farmer Dr. Ophelia Nick said the pictures showed pigs that were so injured they should have been euthanised immediately and taken out of the food chain. The Green Party has indirectly called for the agriculture minister, who has only been in post for a fortnight, to step down over the footage.

In Stern TV’s report, the farm’s vet said the pictures didn’t correspond to the practice’s own notes on the farm, but acknowledged that there hadn’t been any welfare inspections of the holding between April 2014 and June 2017.

German animal rights organisation the Albert Schweitzer Foundation announced on Thursday that it has filed a criminal complaint against the state agriculture minister, who the organisation claims is now trying to distance herself from the farm business, which she ran with her husband until her ministerial appointment in June.

Publication of the footage comes at an especially embarrassing time for North Rhine-Westphalia, as the regional government is attempting to scrap measures that allow organisations to legally enforce animal welfare rules.