Kate Nash Pushes Starbucks to Ditch Harmful Vegan Milk Upcharge

For Immediate Release:
August 22, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

This morning, on World Plant Milk Day, actor, singer, and longtime vegan Kate Nash sent a letter on PETA U.K.’s behalf to Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan urging him to end the chain’s shameless surcharge on vegan milks.

“I’m currently starring in Coffee Wars, a movie in which my character, like me, is all about creating delicious coffee drinks that no animal had to suffer for,” writes Nash. “And while I love Starbucks coffee, it left a bitter taste in my mouth when I learned from my friends at PETA that customers who choose non-dairy milk still have to pay extra.”

In the dairy industry, calves are taken away from their beloved mothers so that the milk they produce for the calves can be sold to humans. Once the cows’ bodies wear out after repeated pregnancies, they’re sent to slaughter. The industry is also a major contributor to the climate catastrophe: Its emissions are the primary source of the greenhouse gas methane, which is 80 times more potent in warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Starbucks has even admitted that vegan milks are better for the planet than dairy milk.

As Nash notes in her letter, the surcharge is not just harmful to animals and the planet but also unfair to the millions of people around the world who are lactose intolerant. Starbucks dropped the dairy-free milk upcharge in the U.K. at the beginning of 2022, and several U.S. coffee chains already offer vegan milks at no extra cost.

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