Big dairy better be wary. Casey Affleck and Ryan Gosling have helped us expose dairy farms’ cruel practice of dehorning calves to the public, and now PETA is appealing directly to dairy distributors’ shareholders.
We bought stock in several dairy companies and businesses that have dairy farms in their supply chains so that we could propose shareholder resolutions asking the companies to phase out dehorning. Last week, we attended the annual meeting for WhiteWave, which owns Horizon Organic Milk, and told the other stockholders how the companies’ dairy farm workers use searing-hot irons to burn off horn tissue or sharp tools to gouge out, or cut off calves’ horns and often the surrounding tissue, too, while the animals bellow and writhe in pain. Not exactly the kind of thing that stockholders want to hear. We’ll be piping up at the annual meeting for Domino’s and proposing a shareholder resolution asking the company to require its suppliers to phase out dehorning.
PETA is offering both companies an easy solution: breed for polled (hornless) cattle. A single gene determines whether or not a cow will have horns, and this approach has proved effective in the beef industry.
We’re also offering consumers an easy way to end dehorning: Purchase only cruelty-free (nondairy) milk. Let’s horn in on cruelty, shall we?
