According to ads for the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB), “Great Cheese comes from Happy Cows. Happy Cows come from California.” To back up this ludicrous slogan, the ads show a couple of bulls or a few cows in lush green pastures. It is an idyllic image. The problem: For the vast majority of California dairy cows, these ads are pure fiction … and PETA is calling the board on its deception.

The reality is that most of California’s dairy cows live anything but easy lives. They are kept in feces- and urine-saturated, completely treeless, grassless, “dry lots” of dirt (or mud, during part of the year); artificially inseminated as often as possible; attached to milking machines nearly every day of their lives (including throughout their pregnancies); deprived of their beloved calves (shown in the ads talking about the bliss of their lives to their grandmothers!), who are taken away to be turned into veal; and, when their worn-out bodies can no longer meet the inordinately high production demands of the industry, trucked in all weather conditions to the slaughterhouse to be strung up by one leg and have their throats slit. Happy cows?!

PETA has been fighting these ads on various fronts, but the CMAB has gone to great lengths to avoid accountability for its deceptive campaign. A lawsuit that PETA filed to challenge the ads is currently pending before a California appellate court after the state-supervised CMAB sought to avoid liability there by relying on a technicality of state law that exempts the government from being sued for violating false-advertising laws—no matter how deceptive or harmful the ads may be.

Now, in response to the CMAB’s efforts to expand the ads into new markets, PETA attorney Matthew Penzer is filing formal complaints with the attorneys general and directors of agriculture of Washington and Oregon, calling for injunctions to be issued under the states’ false advertising and unlawful food marketing laws to stop further airing of these deceptive ads. Granting PETA’s complaints would make a world of difference to cows and calves, who live miserably to provide milk for the dairy industry and flesh for the veal industry, by preventing the dissemination of misleading information to consumers, the majority of whom care about the way animals are treated.

“The ads are deceptive and mislead consumers, who would be horrified by the waste-contaminated fields and veal crates that are the realities for California dairy cows and their calves,” says PETA’s legal counsel Matthew Penzer. “At a time when manufacturing assurances, such as ‘Made in the USA’ and ‘Dolphin-Safe Tuna,’ mean so much to consumers, misrepresentations that cover up the harsh treatment of dairy cows cannot be tolerated,” says Penzer.