Senator Refuses Slaughterhouse Tour: PETA Sends Truthful Video Instead

Group Provides Pro-Dairy Lawmaker With a Complete Look at Milk Production

For Immediate Release:
June 21, 2019

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Today, PETA sent state Sen. Joanne M. Comerford video footage from a slaughterhouse where cows used by dairy farms end up after their bodies wear out and their milk production wanes. Earlier this week, the group asked Comerford to include a slaughterhouse in her upcoming tour of a dairy farm—and yesterday her office responded, saying that she’s “declining PETA’s invitation to visit a slaughterhouse.”

“Without a stop at a slaughterhouse, this is a sham tour by a senator with her head in the sand,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “If Senator Comerford insists on promoting the dairy industry, the least she can do is watch PETA’s video and see for herself how cows are strung up and their throats are slit once they’re no longer milk-producing money-makers.”

Humans are the only species to drink milk beyond the age of weaning and to consume the milk of another species. In today’s dairy industry, calves are taken away from their mothers within hours or days of birth so that their mothers’ milk can be consumed by humans instead. Male calves are often shipped off to be caged and slaughtered for the veal industry, while females eventually endure the same fate as their mothers: repeated artificial insemination in order to produce a steady supply of milk until their bodies give out and they’re sent to the slaughterhouse.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. The group’s letter is available here. For more information, please visit PETA.org.