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

animalrights.change / CC

Dean Foods is mooving out. It's closing two of its PET Dairy plants—one in Portsmouth, Virginia, and another in Kingsport, Tennessee, which means that milk production at the facilities will slowly dry up over the next two months.

PETA wants to lease the Portsmouth facility (located just across the river from our headquarters in Norfolk) and turn it into a Cow Empathy Museum, which would enlighten visitors about how cows and their calves suffer on dairy farms. The museum would offer interactive displays so that visitors could be hooked up to a milking machine or crammed into a small crate to give them a taste of the dairy industry's routine cruelty to animals. They'd also learn "cowlture" facts—for example, cows form social hierarchies within their herds, and many cows who have been separated from their calves will do anything they can to find their babies.

Once they are done learning about all the reasons that dairy is a downer, visitors could order soy ice cream treats and other tasty vegan foods in the Cow Empathy Restaurant. And everyone 12 years old or younger would receive a plush toy cow with a tag reading, "Cows Are Cool! Dump Dairy!"

Fingers crossed that the laid-off dairy employees will soon be toasting in celebration of their new jobs at the Cow Empathy Museum, with an ice-cold glass of Silk.

Written by Karin Bennett