Overturned Truck Carrying Milk Cartons Prompts PETA’s ‘Spilled Milk’ Billboard

New Ad Highlights Dairy Industry’s Cruelty to Calves and Their Mothers

For Immediate Release:
May 26, 2015

Contact:
Shakira Croce 202-483-7382

In the wake of reports that a big rig carrying 25,000 pounds of milk cartons overturned on Monday, spilling milk all over a State Route 99 off-ramp in Sacramento, PETA plans to put a new twist on an old adage with a billboard that shows a calf covered with filth beside the words “Spilled Milk Is Worth Crying Over.” The group—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—is negotiating with outdoor advertisers to display the billboard near the site of the crash in the hope of reaching motorists with the ad’s message: “Calves are torn away from their mothers so that humans can steal their mothers’ milk. You can help them by going vegan.”

“For every drop of spilled milk on the California highway, gentle, loving mother cows cried out for their stolen babies,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s billboard encourages everyone to make a difference for these animals by choosing healthy and humane plant-based milk instead.”

Cows used by the dairy industry are kept almost constantly pregnant by artificial insemination and are bred to produce such unnaturally large quantities of milk that they experience increased rates of infection, such as mastitis. The wear of constant pregnancy prematurely exhausts the cows’ bodies, and the animals are shipped to slaughter at just a fraction of their natural life expectancy.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.