‘Cow Handmaids’ to Protest Dairy Industry Cruelty

PETA Says Drinking Cow’s Milk Supports the Abuse of Female Animals

For Immediate Release:
May 1, 2018

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

What:    Wearing red robes and white bonnets inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale, a group of masked PETA “cows” will gather in Harvard Square with signs proclaiming, “Dairy: Babies Stolen From Their Mothers,” to protest the dairy industry, which forcibly impregnates cows and then takes their babies so that humans can drink their milk instead.

When:    Wednesday, May 2, 12 noon

Where:    Harvard Square, at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Dunster Street, Cambridge

“Just as human women are in Gilead, in the dairy industry, mother cows are used as baby-making machines and they’re left grieving for the babies who are stolen from them,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on kind people everywhere to reject this real-life Handmaid’s Tale and choose healthy, delicious vegan options instead.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that, in a practice reminiscent of “the ceremony,” cows are repeatedly forcibly inseminated on what the dairy industry itself has called a “rape rack.” All of their babies are taken away from them, and just as Offred searches for her daughter in the Hulu series, cows have been heard calling for their stolen calves for days after separation. Female calves face the same fate as their mothers: Their bodies are reduced to their ability to reproduce and are used as milk-producing machines for their whole lives.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.