Local Students Want Strawberry Milk; PETA Offers a Vegan Version!

For Immediate Release:
February 3, 2022

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

After students at Lincoln Street School successfully petitioned for strawberry milk to be added to their cafeteria menu, TeachKind—PETA’s humane education division—sent a letter today to the district’s food service director, Jeanne Pierce, with a health-conscious, humane offer. TeachKind points out that dairy-free drinks are far better for animals, the environment, and children, including those who are lactose intolerant—who can get more efficient calcium intake from green, leafy vegetables while avoiding all the fat and cholesterol in dairy—and offers to send vegan strawberry milk for the kids to enjoy instead.

“Young people care about animals, so their taste for nonvegan strawberry milk would sour if they knew that mother cows and their calves are cruelly separated from each other forever on dairy farms,” says PETA Senior Director of Youth Programs Marta Holmberg. “PETA’s TeachKind division wants to help Lincoln Street School officials encourage students’ natural kindness by providing dairy-free milk that’s sweet to everyone.”

TeachKind—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit TeachKind.org or follow the group on Facebook or Instagram.

TeachKind’s letter to Pierce follows.

February 3, 2022

Jeanne Pierce

Food Service Director

School Administrative Unit 16

Dear Ms. Pierce:

I am writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—PETA entities have more than 9 million members and supporters globally—with an offer that I hope you’ll find berry appealing. After seeing the news that students at Lincoln Street School lobbied to have strawberry milk added to the cafeteria menu, we’d like to send these budding activists a little more fruit of their labor: dairy-free strawberry milk. We’re sure that once the kids have tried it, their next order of business will be making a nondairy option available for students.

Dairy-free strawberry milk is significantly lower in fat and calories than strawberry cow’s milk and is higher in calcium and iron, giving children the nutrition they need without contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic, thereby promoting wellness among your students. Providing a nondairy option would also allow students who are lactose intolerant to enjoy strawberry milk with their classmates.

Dairy-free milk is also kinder to animals and the environment, both of which are increasingly important to young people. Given the chance, cows nurture their young and form lifelong friendships with one another. They play games and have a wide range of emotions and personality traits. But on dairy farms, cows are repeatedly artificially inseminated to keep them producing milk. As soon as they give birth, their precious babies are taken away. Mother cows often cry out for their calves for days. And dairy farms have an enormously detrimental effect on the environment. Animal agriculture uses massive amounts of land, water, and energy, while manure runoff poisons groundwater, lakes, and rivers. One cow emits around 220 pounds of methane—a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide—every year.

We hope you’ll be sweet on our dairy-free strawberry milk offer and look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully,

Lisbet Chiriboga

TeachKind Program Manager