That Cheese Pairing Isn’t Worth It: PETA Shakes Up Local Wine Country With New TV Spot
For Immediate Release:
July 18, 2023
Contact:
Brittney Williams 202-483-7382
Wine drinkers may find it hard to swallow the cheeses on their charcuterie boards after a crying calf crashes their date with MasterChef this week to drive home the true cost of dairy.
In the 15-second spot, which will hit local airwaves during the cooking show, a customer wants to know how much a wedge of cheese will cost—and the calf, chained up behind the shop’s register and swarming with flies, has the answer: “Too much.” The computer-generated calf is ear-tagged with the name and number of an actual calf in a photograph sent to PETA by a whistleblower at Daisy Farms in Paris, Texas. The group’s subsequent undercover investigation revealed that despite the dairy company’s claims to the contrary, cows crammed inside massive, filthy sheds were kicked, whipped, or jabbed and calves were separated from their mothers just after birth and force-fed, one fatally.
“We can all live without dairy cheese, but calves need the milk that’s meant to nourish them, not us,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA reminds everyone that there’s a delicious vegan cheese to pair with any wine, including the vino from Texas Wine Country.”
In the dairy industry, the milk that mother cows produce to sustain their calves is funneled onto grocery store shelves for human consumption. Meanwhile, traumatized male calves are slaughtered for veal and female calves eventually take their mothers’ place: They’re restrained, forcibly impregnated again and again, and used as milk machines until their bodies break down and they’re sent to slaughter.
Every person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals each year daily suffering and terrifying deaths and avoids all the artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat found in dairy cheese. PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help those looking to make the switch.
PETA’s spot will air during MasterChef on Wednesday, July 19, at 7 p.m.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
