PETA Statement: We’ll Pay to Send the ‘Sleeping Cow’ From a Viral Photo to a Sanctuary!

For Immediate Release:
August 15, 2017

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA President Ingrid Newkirk about PETA’s offer to help send a cow named Audri—whose nap with a boy at the Iowa State Fair was captured in a photograph that went viral—to a sanctuary instead of back to a dairy farm:

A boy and his cow can have a happy ending, with the cow safe at a sanctuary and the boy assured that his friend will be treated with kindness, rather than like a milk machine. PETA defies anyone to look at this sweet photograph of a tuckered-out cow and her young friend nestled together and see only a carton of milk. She doesn’t deserve to be impregnated repeatedly and forcibly separated from her own children on a dairy farm, only to end up being slaughtered and cut into chops and burgers. PETA is gladly offering to cover the cost of moving her to a sanctuary so that these two friends can enjoy many more naps together, shoulder to shoulder, in the future.

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