Written by Michelle Kretzer
Paul McCartney once went to Kansas City to get his baby back, and now PETA is blazing the same trail to help teens get their baby faces back.
A new study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that teenagers who drank more milk had more problems with acne. It confirmed similar findings by the Harvard School of Public Health. So PETA plans to take this message to high schools around the country, starting with the ad that we've placed in the Kansas City, Missouri, metro area:
Besides being crappy for the complexion, milk is cruel to cows. Want to save face? Grab a carton of tasty nondairy soy, almond, or rice milk the next time you're at the grocery store and keep your skin and your conscience clear.
Written by PETA
Update: PETA has filed a lawsuit against the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets under the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) seeking records relating to Adirondack Farms, LLC—the subject of last year's undercover PETA investigation that revealed routine abuse and neglect of cows (see below for details).
© Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals
Despite these abuses, the department certified Adirondack under its Cattle Health Assurance Program, which is meant to protect the health and welfare of cows on dairy farms. Records relating to a farm's participation in this program are supposed to be open to the general public under FOIL, but the department has improperly denied PETA access to many of these records. Since this information is of vital interest to anyone who wants to see farmed animals treated with the respect and care that they deserve, PETA was left with no choice but to sue to obtain the withheld records.
Originally posted on April 11, 2012:
The dairy farm manager who repeatedly electro-shocked a cow in the face and brushed off the fact that his workers hit cows with poles and canes by saying that they sometimes "get carried away" is still employed as a manager at the farm—a month after PETA notified the farm's owners of the cruelty and released video evidence of the abuse.
More Cruelty Caught on Video
The same manager at Adirondack Farms, LLC, in Peru, New York, was recorded jabbing a downed cow in the ribs with a screwdriver and dragging her behind a skid steer. He cursed at her—calling her a "dumb b***h" and asking how the "f**k" she was unable to stand. You may remember that this man stated that when a cow's uterus prolapses during calving, workers simply "put [the uterus] back in and hope she lives … long enough for the beef truck to come get her."
Farm Silent on Ending Abuse
Before we went public with the video footage that we gathered during our undercover investigation, we asked the farm's owners to take immediate disciplinary action, including termination, against the employees who were documented abusing animals. We gave the owners a detailed list of men and explained what they did. We followed up. Four weeks later, the owners remain silent. Even after eye-opening news reports on the case, neither Adirondack Farms nor Agri-Mark, the company that it supplies with milk, has announced taking a single meaningful step to improve their animal welfare standards. And that this manager is still on the job at the farm suggests that it's cruel business as usual there and beyond in the dairy industry.
What You Can Do
Update: The bank claimed ownership of the bankrupt couple's property and wanted to sell the cows to slaughter. But the original whistleblower stepped in and saved the cows' lives, this time tenaciously pursuing a deal with the bank to allow her to assume all responsibility for the animals' care. Now the cows will live out their days in peace and safety, never to be harmed for milk or meat. The cows' original owners still face cruelty-to-animals charges.
Originally posted on March 6th:
Many people are still laboring under the illusion that animals are somehow treated better on farms that label their products "organic," but a recent cruelty case that PETA was involved with shows that animals on organic farms often fare no better than those on non-organic farms.
A whistleblower alerted PETA to a dairy farm where hundreds of cows were starving and two or three were dying every week. The whistleblower had tried to get the owners of the farm to feed the cows, but the owners were bankrupt, and with no money to feed the animals, they had simply left them to die.
This cow was too weak to stand.
We contacted local law-enforcement officials and, with the help of the district attorney, got state veterinarians to go out to the farm. The vets confirmed that this was indeed a case of cruelty and neglect, and police arrested the owners and charged them with cruelty to animals. The owners were later released on the grounds that they had to do whatever it took to care for the cows or they would face felony charges. Some people in the community have donated food, and the owners are juggling their finances to make food for the cows a priority. PETA has confirmed that the cows' health is improving.
While these animals are doing better, across the country, cows are still suffering on organic dairy farms. Often crowded into cramped sheds or onto mud-filled lots, cows are repeatedly impregnated and have their babies taken away so that people can drink the milk that nature intended for calves. Don't let your friends and family be fooled—"organic" does not mean "humane."
Written by Jeff Mackey
PETA has asked the Washington State Patrol (WSP) to open a criminal investigation after as many as 70 animals endured prolonged agony and died in the October 6 crash of a cattle transport truck container in Seattle. The request also urges WSP to bring cruelty-to-animals and unsafe-animal-transport charges against the person or people responsible if criminal actions are discovered.
In a jarring reminder that the trucks used to transport farmed animals are no less cruel and treacherous than the factory farms and slaughterhouses that they travel between, the cattle container came unhinged on Interstate 90 and slid 200 yards along the road when the driver, hauling for J & H Express, Inc., rounded a curve. Video of the gruesome scene shows struggling survivors kicking their limbs and hooves, which were stuck in the container's grated sides. Photos by WSP responders reveal cattle piled on top of one another and covered with feces.
The animals were apparently denied emergency veterinary care. About three hours passed before the cattle—who had already endured many hours of transport from Hawaii—were driven three additional hours to Sunnyside, Washington, where at least 20 of the injured were reportedly discovered to have died. The driver was cited for traveling too fast and failing to secure his load. WSP personnel found that he had "failed to lock down all four corners" of the container given that two of its locking pins "had no damage or marking on them."
According to Washington law, inflicting needless suffering on an animal through recklessness or criminal negligence or failing to provide one's animals with necessary medical attention constitutes second-degree cruelty to animals if the animal suffers unnecessary or unjustifiable physical pain. State law also makes it clear that causing animals to be transported in a way that jeopardizes their safety or that of the public is a misdemeanor.
Even without the flagrant and possibly illegal actions that lead to truck accidents (which happen frequently) and the misery that they cause, transport is hell on animals, who are often beaten or shocked to get them to cram into the trailer of the 18-wheeler. During the trip, they are often deprived of food and water for the entire journey, which may take days. They suffer from heat exhaustion in the summer and freeze to the sides of the truck in winter, and they're forced to inhale diesel exhaust and ammonia fumes from their own waste—if they can breathe at all. After the trauma of the farm and the truck, many animals are so ill or injured that they're unable to stand and walk on their own, so they're kicked or dragged off the trucks to their deaths.
From birth to slaughter, the life of every animal used for food is a long procession of indignities and injuries, which are funded with each dollar spent on meat, eggs, or dairy products. Don't buy into animals' misery—go vegan today!
It's been a few years since Casey Affleck graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but he popped up on campus in a new video, asking everyone to be kind to cows—by dumping dairy products.
A PETA supporter wearing a cow costume showed students at Casey's alma mater an undercover dairy farm exposé, "Dehorning: Dairy's Dark Secret," that the vegan actor narrated for PETA. The video shows calves and cows thrashing and crying out as they undergo intensely painful dehorning, in which farm workers gouge out or saw off the restrained animals' sensitive horns or burn away the developing horn tissue—all without any painkillers.
Students found the cruelty in the video hard to stomach, but they loved the free boxes of rich chocolate soy milk, agreeing that it's easy to do away with dairy products with just a few simple swaps.
Want more Casey? Watch his vegetarian testimonial and then join his campaign to end the abuse of animals on factory farms.
In the wake of New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's anti-obesity proposal to ban the sale of large sugary drinks in the Big Apple, hip-hop mogul, philanthropist, and New Yorker Russell Simmons has written to the city's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, on PETA's behalf, asking that the ban be extended to include fattening—and cholesterol-laden—cow's milk.
adria.richards|cc by 2.0
As a vegan, Russell knows about the health benefits of plant-centered nutrition. He explained to Dr. Farley how kids who drink large amounts of milk are more likely to become overweight. Plus, unlike soda, punch, or lemonade, dairy products are loaded with dangerous artery-clogging cholesterol, raising the health risks even higher.
Be your own health commissioner—for your waistline and your heart, ban dairy products in favor of delicious milk, cheese, and ice cream made from soy, almonds, rice, coconuts, and other healthy and humane plant sources. PETA's Vegan Shopping Guide can help you get started!
On Dairy Day in Albany—when dairy industry representatives flood the New York capitol—State Sen. Tony Avella, a friend to animals and member of the Agriculture Committee, joined PETA in calling on Agri-Mark, Inc., maker of Cabot and McCadam cheeses, to end animal abuse on its suppliers' farms.
Three months have passed since PETA alerted Agri-Mark to the cruelty to cows documented during PETA's undercover investigation at one of Agri-Mark's suppliers, Adirondack Farms, LLC, and asked the company to require all cooperative members to implement basic and reasonable reforms that would prevent such cruelty from continuing and improve cows' lives.
Nearly 60,000 supporters have joined PETA's call so far, but Agri-Mark remains silent and apparently hasn't done a thing. Indeed, one manager who jabbed a downed cow in the ribs with a screwdriver and used a skid steer to drag her approximately 25 feet and electro-shocked another cow on the face repeatedly was left working in a supervisory capacity at the facility!
The dairy industry flacks—including those pimping McCadam cheese, made just down the road from Adirondack Farms—were hoping to celebrate Dairy Day by cozying up to lawmakers but were instead reminded of the cruelty of their dirty business as Sen. Avella displayed video footage from PETA's investigation. The exposé showed cows who were jabbed with poles and a calf who thrashed in agony while her horn buds and surrounding tissue were burned off without pain relief as smoke rose from her flesh.
Please help Sen. Avella and PETA make sure that Agri-Mark gets the message to implement PETA's recommendations to end the most egregious abuses of cows on its cooperative members' farms immediately.
PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman, who's also the mother of a child in the California public school system, has written to the administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service asking that the service pull all beef and cow's milk from school lunches after mad cow disease was discovered in an animal at a California rendering plant.
A group of parents who are "DAM MAD" (Dads Against Meat and Mothers Against Dairy) also converged on the Sacramento headquarters of the California Department of Food and Agriculture to urge it to protect children by pulling meat and dairy products from school lunches.
What's truly mad is continuing to feed beef and cow's milk to students, especially because "spent" cows, whose milk supply is exhausted by the dairy industry, are the primary concern when it comes to mad cow disease and are likely to end up as the kind of cheap ground beef that is fed to schoolchildren.
Given that the USDA has expanded its quarantine to a second dairy farm, that it still has not located the infected cow's mother or siblings (who may also have the disease), and that it doesn't even know what the California dairy industry is feeding its cows (because that's considered a "trade secret"), the USDA must stop risking our children's health and remove beef and cow's milk from school cafeterias right away.
Tracy's letter and the demonstration by the DAM MAD parents coincided with another PETA appeal to the USDA urging Secretary Tom Vilsack to correct misleading statements that he made regarding the detection of the disease—also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)—that created a false and dangerous sense of security by erroneously claiming that the nation's human and animal food supply is safe.
In the letter to Vilsack, PETA points out that there is no way to know how many other animals are infected with mad cow disease because only a tiny fraction—about 0.1 percent of the nearly 34 million cows who are slaughtered every year—are tested for BSE. It's also likely that milk from the cow who tested positive entered the food chain, and contrary to the USDA's assurances about the safety of milk, studies have already shown that another form of the disease can be spread from mother to baby through milk.
Worried that tainted milk or meat may be on your child's lunch tray? Don't wait for the USDA to act. Protect your kids (and yourself) by packing healthy and humane vegan lunches—and keep it up at breakfast, dinner, and snacktime, too!
With the discovery of mad cow disease in a cow from a California dairy farm and in potentially more cows as the U.S. Department of Agriculture searches for her former herdmates, PETA presents the top 10 reasons why cows are so darn mad:
A barbaric device known as a "keystone" or "guillotine" dehorner
Don't Get Mad—Get Vegan. Grab a free vegetarian/vegan starter kit and make for fewer mad cows in the world.
After happening upon a case of mad cow disease at a California rendering plant during its testing of less than 0.5 percent of cows, the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) is now searching for the infected animal's offspring, where her mother ended up, and her mother's other offspring, as all of them could potentially be infected, too. If an infected cow is slaughtered, the tainted meat could cause a degenerative brain disorder known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in anyone who ingests it. The disease, which is always fatal, causes sponge-like holes in the brain.
Also of concern in this case is the fact that milk from the infected cow may have been sold for human consumption. The USDA claims that vCJD cannot be contracted by consuming the milk of infected animals, but as a Mother Jones article points out, the sheep form of the disease, scrapie, has indeed been shown to pass from mother to offspring through milk.
Groks | cc by 2.0
The Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, posits that because the number of cows the USDA tests is so low—less than half of 1 percent of the nearly 34 million slaughtered annually—many cases could be and likely are going undetected. Jean Halloran, Consumers Union director of food policy initiatives, stated:
The fact we found one in 40,000 could actually be interpreted as worrisome. Does that mean if we tested 80,000 we'd find two? ... Our testing program is so small it can't give us even a ball-park idea of whether we have a problem here or not.
If the lack of adequate testing makes you think the USDA may be playing Russian roulette with our health, consider that we do the same thing every time we bite into a piece of meat that increases our risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and strokes. And then order a slew of free vegetarian/vegan starter kits for the people you love who still eat meat.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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