New PETA Billboard Says Don’t Separate Any Loving Families

Ad Encourages Kindness to Mothers and Their Children—No Matter Their Nationality, Race, Religion, or Species

For Immediate Release:
July 2, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

In the midst of heartbreaking family separations, PETA is calling for compassion for all mothers and children—including human ones, of course. The group plans to run a billboard in Tucson that shows a mother cow and her calf next to the words “Loving Mothers and Their Children Should Never Be Separated. Please Go Vegan.”

“It’s cruel to separate any parent from her beloved child,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “We are heartsick over the trauma that families are experiencing at the border and hope people will extend their compassion to mother cows whose calves are stolen from them on dairy farms by switching to soy and other plant-derived milks.”

In the dairy industry, mother cows are repeatedly forcibly impregnated and their calves are taken away from them shortly after birth so that their milk can be consumed by humans instead—and cows have been heard calling for their stolen babies for days after separation. Male calves are typically crated for veal, while females are kept in intensive confinement—sometimes mired in their own waste—and used as milk machines until their bodies give out and they’re slaughtered for cheap meat.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way”—also plans to run the billboard in San Ysidro, California, and has donated a shipment of soy milk to the Humanitarian Respite Center (HRC) in McAllen, Texas. The HRC offers food and beverages to immigrants who have been released from the McAllen detention center and has expressed a need for soy milk, which is appropriate for children who have allergies, are lactose intolerant, or are vegan.

As a social justice organization, PETA believes that oppression is wrong, regardless of the race, gender identity, age, nationality, sexuality, ability, or species of the victim. For more information, please visit PETA.org.