MOOve On, Dairy Farmers!’: PETA’s Pro-Cow Message Shakes Up UK Dairy Day
Telford – Ahead of UK Dairy Day’s 10th anniversary event today at Telford International Centre – where terrified cows will be exhibited like objects – PETA erected an eye-catching billboard near the venue to reach dairy farmers with an important message: “It’s time to moove on. The future of farming is vegan.” PETA’s plea also coincides with Back British Farming Day today, and the charity hopes it will encourage dairy farmers to get out of the doomed cow-exploiting industry and embrace sustainable, animal-friendly plant farming.
The billboard is located at the intersection of Colliers Way and Hall Park Way,
“Forcibly impregnating cows and stealing their babies may be just another day on the job for farmers, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” says PETA Vice President of Vegan Corporate Projects Dawn Carr. “PETA’s billboard urges dairy farmers to leave the violence and heartbreak of their outdated operations behind and pivot towards farming that doesn’t exploit animals, such as growing oats for sustainable plant-based milk.”
Cows used for dairy are artificially inseminated and their calves are taken from them shortly after birth so that their milk can be sold and consumed by humans instead. Male calves, who are considered a by-product by the dairy industry, may be shot in the head soon after birth or sentenced to a short, miserable life before being carved up for veal. Most female calves are destined for the same fate as their mothers: they’ll be 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” – notes that 10% of dairy farmers plan to stop producing milk and 23% are unsure whether they will remain in the industry in the future. And 48% of British adults are now using plant milks, including UK-produced oat milk, which contain none of the artery-clogging animal fat and cholesterol of cows’ milk and are better for the environment, while government data show that the consumption of cows’ milk in UK households has almost halved in the last 50 years. The group released a video celebrating British farmers and launched a campaign earlier this year encouraging the government to help farmers switch to plant-based agriculture.
