|
Just as cigarette manufacturers target teens, the dairy industry directs much of its huge ad budget toward children, running ads featuring stars with kid appeal, like Carson Daly, the Backstreet Boys, and TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” But the purpose of those ads is to peddle a product, not “build strong bones.” One ad, for example, advises girls to drink four glasses of milk a day—that adds up to 33 grams of fat, including 20 grams of heart-stopping saturated fat, all at a time when our nation’s children are struggling with an obesity epidemic. Kids aren’t told that milk is linked to heart disease, cancer, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, and other health problems or that cows and their calves suffer on factory dairy farms.
PETA is fighting back. Take a peek at how the dairy industry is trying to “milk” children—and what we’re doing to stop it.
|
|
 PETA distributes these sassy cards, featuring dairy-damaged characters like “Chubby Charlie” and “Windy Wanda” (all suffering from the ill-health effects associated with drinking milk, eating ice cream and piling on the cheese), to school kids on both sides of the Atlantic. Millions of students are force-fed regular doses of dairy propaganda—ranging from bookmarks to posters to Web sites—given free to educators by trade groups. Wrote one teacher in The Edmonton Sun, “The Canadian school system is polluted with misinformation that is sponsored by the meat and dairy industry.” |
|
|
 When PETA learned that “Got Milk?” advertisements lined the halls of Edmunds Middle School in Burlington, Vermont, we demanded that the school provide equal space for our materials—or face legal action. Our literature shows kids that milk is harmful to humans and animals (kids are horrified to learn that male calves are taken away from their dairy cow mothers just days after birth and chained inside cramped, dark crates to be raised for veal). Rather than tell students the truth about dairy, school officials removed the pro-milk posters.
|
|
|
 Move over, Tom Green. We one-upped the gross-out king by running this outrageous ad in the papers of high schools housing the milk industry’s new campus vending machines. The machines dispense colorful bottles of high-fat flavored milk drinks, artery-clogging concoctions that contain 460 calories, a whopping 16 grams of fat, 60 mg of cholesterol and 58 grams of sugar per bottle. To compare, an equal amount of cola has fewer than half the calories, no fat, no cholesterol and less sugar!
The milk mustache folks weren’t smiling when they heard about our ad. The National Dairy Council called The Panther, a Florida high school newspaper, and promised to pay for a milk ad if the students rejected PETA’s parody. Instead, The Panther ran a story about the call—and our full-page ad. As a result, students went to our Web site and discovered that cows are kept constantly pregnant, regularly dosed with growth hormones and antibiotics and shipped to slaughter at a fraction of their natural life span.
|
 Discover the joy of soy!
Give your family healthy, humane soy, almond or rice milk instead. For alternatives to dairy foods, check out DumpDairy.com or write us.
|
|
|
|
|
  Florida mom Jillian Gross says dairy products caused her baby “much unnecessary suffering.” She writes: “My youngest daughter began suffering from colds and painful ear infections after her doctor took her off her soy-based infant formula and switched her to cow’s milk. Last month, he recommended putting tubes in her ears to correct the condition. I didn’t want to put her through the surgery, so I followed PETA’s advice and switched her to fortified soy milk and took her completely off dairy.” Since then, Justine “has not been sick once, nor has she had an ear infection.”
Sound familiar? If your kids suffer from colic, ear infections, allergies or recurrent bronchitis, it’s probably time to dump the dairy. Milk has also been linked to juvenile-onset diabetes.
Cow’s milk is meant for baby cows, not baby humans—when fed to your children, milk can make them sick. In the last edition of Baby and Child Care, the late Dr. Benjamin Spock wrote, “There was a time when cow’s milk was considered very desirable. But research, along with clinical experience, has forced doctors and nutritionists to rethink this recommendation.” For more information, visit DumpDairy.com.
|
|
