Spanish-Language ‘Not Your Mom? Not Your Milk!’ Billboard Now Up in Albuquerque

PETA Latino Ad Encourages Latino Community Targeted by the Dairy Industry to Leave Cow’s Milk for the Calves

For Immediate Release:
August 23, 2018

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

Because the U.S. dairy industry is currently relying heavily on foreign-born Latinos for sales, PETA Latino has placed a billboard in Albuquerque showing a mother cow and her calf alongside the words “Not Your Mom? Not Your Milk!” in Spanish. The group has also installed the billboard in the largely Spanish-speaking communities of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Yuma, Arizona.

The Albuquerque billboard is located on Interstate 25 S., just south of the Gibson Boulevard S.E. exit, and will be up for one month.

“Cow’s milk represents a mother’s pain when her calf is torn away from her soon after birth on cruel dairy farms,” says PETA Latino Senior Manager and mother Alicia Aguayo. “PETA Latino’s ad encourages everyone to question the dairy industry’s dishonest marketing schemes and steer clear of dairy ‘products’ in favor of healthier, cruelty-free beverages made from soy, oat, and other plants.”

PETA Latino—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that humans are the only species to drink milk beyond weaning age and to consume the milk of another species. In today’s dairy industry, calves are taken away from their mothers within hours or days of birth so that their mothers’ milk can be consumed by humans instead. Male calves are often shipped off to be slaughtered for the veal industry, while female calves endure the same fate as their mothers: repeated artificial insemination in order to force them to produce a steady supply of milk until their bodies give out and they’re sent to the slaughterhouse.

The dairy industry spends millions funding misleading ad campaigns urging people to consume cow’s milk, and its exploitative marketing to Latino immigrants is particularly irresponsible, considering that people of Hispanic heritage tend to have higher rates of lactose intolerance. Studies also show that immigrants to the U.S. from Latin America tend to decline in health the longer they live in the country, largely because of the unhealthy standard American diet, which is chock-full of artery-clogging animal-derived foods. PETA Latino encourages everyone to dump dairy in favor of fortified soy or almond beverages, which tend to have more calcium than cow’s milk and none of the cholesterol, cow hormones, or cruelty of dairy “products.”

For more information, please visit PETALatino.com.