For Immediate Release:
June 21, 2023
Contact:
Brittney Williams 202-483-7382
Charleston, W. Va. – As the dairy industry tries to promote June as National Dairy Month, a new message from PETA raised across from United Dairy and just a stone’s throw from a local Kroger grocery store may have consumers steering clear of cow’s milk. Featuring a cow mired in manure with a swollen udder, the new sky-high appeal urges everyone to help spare cows suffering by ditching dairy—something that’s easy to do since Kroger stocks oat, soy, hemp, and many other dairy-free milks.
“If consumers saw cows confined in filth and forcibly impregnated on dairy farms, they’d lose their lunch,” says PETA Senior Vice President Colleen O’Brien. “PETA urges everyone to ditch dairy and leave cows in peace by opting for readily available, affordable, and delicious vegan milks, cheeses, and yogurts.”
In the dairy industry, calves are torn away from their mothers within a day of birth so the milk meant to nourish them can be stolen and sold to humans. It’s standard industry practice to forcibly and artificially inseminate cows—workers insert an arm into the animals’ rectum and a metal rod to deliver semen into their vagina—and to send them to slaughter once their bodies wear out. PETA’s investigations into dairy facilities have found workers electroshocking cows in the face, hitting them with poles and a cane, and abusing them in other ways.
PETA’s campaign is located at 510 Lee St.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, and offers a free vegan starter kit on its website. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
