Is That Cheese Pairing Worth It? PETA Shakes Up Local Wine Country With New TV Spot

For Immediate Release:
June 26, 2023

Contact:
Brittney Williams 202-483-7382

Muscadine drinkers may find it hard to swallow the cheeses on their charcuterie boards after a crying calf crashes their weekly date with MasterChef to drive home the true cost of dairy.

In the 15-second spot, which will hit local airwaves during the reality cooking show this week, 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. 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.

Such cruelty is typical of the dairy industry, which collects the milk that mother cows produce to sustain their calves and funnels it to 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.

“We can all live without dairy cheese, but calves literally can’t live without 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 North Carolina’s beloved scuppernong.”

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 easy switch.

PETA’s spot will air during Stars on Mars on Monday, June 26, and MasterChef on Wednesday, June 28. It will also air in San Francisco and in the U.S. wine capitals of Napa and Santa Barbara, California.

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