PETA is launching a new initiative calling for basic animal welfare standards for cows on dairy farms on the heels of disturbing new undercover footage of dairy factory farms. The video footage from Mercy for Animals shows baby calves as they are beaten with pickaxes and hammers and have their budding horns burned out of their skulls without being given any pain relief. A PETA undercover investigation into a Land O'Lakes supplier found similar abuse.
 

 
PETA is asking pizza and ice cream chains, grocery stores, and other dairy vendors to commit to buying only from farms that adhere to these minimal standards of animal care:

• Keeping facilities clean and providing flooring, foot care, and bedding
• Immediately euthanizing "downed" cows who can no longer walk
• Ending de-horning and tail-docking, cruel procedures in which cows have a portion of their tails cut off and their horns cut out of their skulls
• Banning the use of bovine growth hormone, which contributes to lameness and a painful inflammation of the udder known as "mastitis" and which has been banned in Europe and Canada
• Providing group housing for female calves, without tethering

These standards would dramatically reduce the suffering of cows and their calves on dairy factory farms. You can help them, too, by always choosing one of the many available nondairy options. 
 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

PETA just launched a TV public service announcement about the filth and cruelty that we exposed in our undercover investigation of a farm that supplies Land O'Lakes. Apparently, some Philadelphia-area viewers were so sickened by the ad that they complained to the TV station that aired it. (If only they'd complained to the perpetrators of the abuse, instead!) As a result, the station pulled the spot after it had aired just twice:

Yes, it's graphic, but that's what happens in the dairy industry: Cows are electro-shocked and jabbed with knives, they live in stalls covered in urine and feces, and sick cows collapse and die. There's nothing pretty about the way that animals who are used to produce milk are treated, but those who still eat these products sometimes prefer to live in blissful ignorance.

Sure, we're disappointed that our ad is no longer airing, but there's still a way for it to reach millions: People like you and me can make the ad go viral! So what are you waiting for? Help us by sharing the pulled ad through Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blogs, e-mails, and any other way you can think of.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor

We're betting the dairy farm that the people of Philadelphia will be swapping out their 2 percent milk for deliciously nutritious soy milk (or rice or almond milk) after seeing this PETA public service announcement (PSA), which began airing in the Philly area yesterday:

Last September, PETA unveiled our five-month undercover investigation of a Pennsylvania-based factory dairy farm that supplies Land O'Lakes. Although we brought the abysmal conditions to Land O'Lakes' attention, the company has done nothing to address the abuse behind the butter. And the Pennsylvania legal system failed to spread any brotherly love—much less protection—to cows on dairy farms, which means that it's up to us to stop this stomach-churning cruelty.

Please pressure Land O'Lakes to implement and enforce the 12-point animal-welfare program that PETA has recommended. And, of course, it goes without saying that you should keep all dairy products out of your grocery carts, right?

Written by Amy Skylark Elizabeth

Despite overwhelmingly sad video and photographic evidence of lame, thin, and downed cows left to suffer and die and a cow whose teat was banded and left to decay and fall off—not to mention expert testimony that all this constituted cruelty—a judge whose courtroom was packed with dairy farmers today found the owners of Reitz Dairy, a filthy Land O'Lakes supplier in Pennsylvania that PETA investigated last year, not guilty.

Conditions like these were defended as "standard dairy practice"!

PETA's investigator found cows on this factory dairy farm collapsed, lame, and struggling to hobble through a deep soup of feces and urine in the perpetually filthy conditions. Cows suffering from painful infections and severe lameness were deprived of even basic care; dying cows were not even put out of their misery. PETA's video shows injured cows as they are kicked, shocked with a high-voltage electric prod, and jabbed along the spine with the open blade of a pocket knife.

A little pat of butter? PETA has brought the abysmal conditions on this farm to Land O'Lakes' attention, but the company is doing nothing to prevent such abuse and neglect on its suppliers' farms and continues to buy from Reitz Dairy.

Cows are great mothers, loyal herd members, wise, and gentle. Studies show that they will sacrifice their own interests for the benefit of the group and that they communicate in subtle ways with facial expressions that we can't even register. When they figure out a puzzle, such as how to open a tricky gate, they have a "eureka moment" and jump for joy.

Because cows cannot rely on the law to protect them, it's up to every concerned person to take a stand—to vote against cruelty with our shopping cart. As this case has vividly demonstrated, milk, cheese, and butter do not come from "happy cows" who frolic in lush green pastures. They come from miserable cows confined to crowded, muck-filled barns—cows who are forcibly impregnated, only to have their newborns yanked away from them so that humans can drink the milk that nature intended for their calves.

That's why we must continue to pressure Land O'Lakes to, at the very least, implement the 12-point animal-welfare program that PETA has recommended. And each one of us needs to "file charges" against factory farms every time we shop by refusing to purchase their ill-gotten products.

Written by Alisa Mullins

PETA's investigation footage from a filthy Pennsylvania dairy facility that supplies Land O'Lakes continues to receive massive press coverage. All the coverage has prompted the Fortune 250 company to issue an official statement—one that only serves to highlight the profit-driven callousness and lack of concern for animals within the corporation and the dairy industry as a whole.

Jeanne Forbis, the director of communications at Land O'Lakes, said, "[W]hen state-certified inspectors do inspections at dairy farms they are inspecting for milk and equipment sanitation practices, not animal treatment."

Is that supposed to be the "excuse" for why the Land O'Lakes inspector didn't bother to note that cows were living in filth, without bedding or a clean, dry place for shelter? Or that lameness and mastitis were rampant? How about the fact that there were cows who were so debilitated and thin that they looked like skeletons with skin draped over them?

Frankly, the inspector didn't do very well on inspecting for sanitation either. Take a look at the video—animals are virtually swimming in a soup of urine and fecal matter. All Forbis's comment does is raise some serious doubts about the quality of the sanitation inspections that led to the approval of this facility.

Various agencies are now looking into PETA's allegations of abuse, as well as sanitation and food safety violations, against the dairy facility's owners. Abuse of animals in the dairy industry is nothing new, so please consider dropping cholesterol and cruelty-filled dairy products from your diet.

Written by Heather Drennan

Yesterday was a big day for the dairy industry. People across the nation were getting their first peek into what dairy farming actually looks like as media outlets covered PETA's recent, revealing undercover investigation into the putrid living conditions and the abusive treatment of cows on one Land O'Lakes supplier's factory farm. At the same time, PETA was dropping in on the first day of the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin.

A couple of passionate ladies were on hand at the Expo to let attendees and passersby know that the dairy industry is dreadful for cows and disgusting for humans. Our undercover investigation revealed that cows at milking stations were caked in feces and urine. It also showed that many of these gentle animals had untreated abscesses that sometimes burst and oozed pus as cows were being milked.

After hearing stories like these, people in Madison were quick to take home copies of our "Vegetarian Starter Kit." Why don't you do the same?

Written by Shawna Flavell