For Immediate Release:
May 17, 2021
Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382
Loyal, Wis. – After learning that students at Loyal Elementary School participated in a dairy industry–backed program, TeachKind—PETA’s humane education division—sent a letter to the superintendent of the School District of Loyal Wisconsin asking him to allow Carly, PETA’s life-size mechanical cow voiced by Alicia Silverstone, to visit the classroom. Carly could offer another perspective on the dairy industry and give the kids a factual yet age-appropriate lesson about the production of cow’s milk.
In the letter, TeachKind points out that the farm involved in the pro-dairy program admits to raising calves in hutches and feeding them pasteurized milk, which means that they are taken away from their mothers. In the dairy industry, this is common practice: Calves are separated from their mothers just days or even hours after birth and aren’t allowed to nurse during the natural lactation period. The milk intended for them is sold to humans instead.
“Young people have a natural affinity for animals and deserve to know the truth about the ways gentle cows suffer on cruel dairy farms,” says PETA Senior Director of Youth Programs Marta Holmberg. “TeachKind urges Loyal Elementary to equip its students with facts, not fairy tales, and let them draw their own conclusions.”
TeachKind—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—has taken Carly to schools across the country, where she’s shared the gripping story of her escape from a dairy farm and the sad fate of her beloved babies, debunked harmful dairy-industry myths, encouraged healthy eating habits, and fostered compassion and respect for animals in caring kids.
TeachKind’s letter to Superintendent Chris Lindner is available upon request. The group opposes speciesism, which is the human-supremacist worldview that cows and other animals are nothing more than commodities. For more information, please visit TeachKind.org or Instagram and Facebook.
