Dairy Production Is the New Whaling, Suggests Local PETA Appeal

For Immediate Release:
August 29, 2023

Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382

A national messaging blitz from PETA is washing up along the historic Whale Trail to ask why so many people accept cruelty to cows on dairy farms but would never reconsider whaling, even though the two mammals are the same in all the ways that matter. Both nurse their young, bond tightly with their calves, interact in socially complex ways, and mourn when they’re separated from those they love.

Instead of being allowed to explore, play, and be with their families, cows in the dairy industry are torn away from their mothers within a day of birth so that the milk meant to nourish them can be stolen and sold in supermarkets. It’s standard industry practice to forcibly inseminate cows—workers insert an arm into the animals’ rectum and a metal rod to deliver semen into their vagina—and both cow and calf are sent to slaughter once their bodies wear out.

“A cow produces milk for her calf, just as a whale does for her calf and a human does for her baby,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA reminds everyone how easy it is to show compassion and understanding by choosing milks made from soy, oats, almonds, or other plants.”

In addition to breaking up families and causing mother cows to grieve, crying out for days, the dairy industry is a major contributor to the climate catastrophe. In the U.S., emissions from cows are the primary source of the greenhouse gas methane, which is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere.

The billboard is located at 706 Acushnet Ave. in New Bedford and can be seen by traffic headed north on Route 18 toward I-95. The ad is also running in Atlanta; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Baltimore; Boston; and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—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.