Written by Michelle Kretzer
Paul McCartney once went to Kansas City to get his baby back, and now PETA is blazing the same trail to help teens get their baby faces back.
A new study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that teenagers who drank more milk had more problems with acne. It confirmed similar findings by the Harvard School of Public Health. So PETA plans to take this message to high schools around the country, starting with the ad that we've placed in the Kansas City, Missouri, metro area:
Besides being crappy for the complexion, milk is cruel to cows. Want to save face? Grab a carton of tasty nondairy soy, almond, or rice milk the next time you're at the grocery store and keep your skin and your conscience clear.
Written by PETA
Update: PETA has filed a lawsuit against the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets under the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) seeking records relating to Adirondack Farms, LLC—the subject of last year's undercover PETA investigation that revealed routine abuse and neglect of cows (see below for details).
© Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals
Despite these abuses, the department certified Adirondack under its Cattle Health Assurance Program, which is meant to protect the health and welfare of cows on dairy farms. Records relating to a farm's participation in this program are supposed to be open to the general public under FOIL, but the department has improperly denied PETA access to many of these records. Since this information is of vital interest to anyone who wants to see farmed animals treated with the respect and care that they deserve, PETA was left with no choice but to sue to obtain the withheld records.
Originally posted on April 11, 2012:
The dairy farm manager who repeatedly electro-shocked a cow in the face and brushed off the fact that his workers hit cows with poles and canes by saying that they sometimes "get carried away" is still employed as a manager at the farm—a month after PETA notified the farm's owners of the cruelty and released video evidence of the abuse.
More Cruelty Caught on Video
The same manager at Adirondack Farms, LLC, in Peru, New York, was recorded jabbing a downed cow in the ribs with a screwdriver and dragging her behind a skid steer. He cursed at her—calling her a "dumb b***h" and asking how the "f**k" she was unable to stand. You may remember that this man stated that when a cow's uterus prolapses during calving, workers simply "put [the uterus] back in and hope she lives … long enough for the beef truck to come get her."
Farm Silent on Ending Abuse
Before we went public with the video footage that we gathered during our undercover investigation, we asked the farm's owners to take immediate disciplinary action, including termination, against the employees who were documented abusing animals. We gave the owners a detailed list of men and explained what they did. We followed up. Four weeks later, the owners remain silent. Even after eye-opening news reports on the case, neither Adirondack Farms nor Agri-Mark, the company that it supplies with milk, has announced taking a single meaningful step to improve their animal welfare standards. And that this manager is still on the job at the farm suggests that it's cruel business as usual there and beyond in the dairy industry.
What You Can Do
Chick-fil-A's so-called "Cow Appreciation Day" involved giving chicken flesh to people who dressed up as cows. We think cows (and chickens) deserve better than that, so here's our new and improved Cow Appreciation Day. We're giving away The Compassionate Cook, our back-by-popular-demand, original vegan cookbook, featuring more than 225 recipes in which no cows, chickens, or any other animals were harmed. Just take the quiz below to learn why intelligent, sensitive cows aren't milk machines and then enter for your chance to win:
1. Just like people, cows are known to ________ when a loved one dies or is separated from them.
2. True or False: Cows' sense of smell is even stronger in some ways than that of most dogs—they can detect scents up to 5 miles away.
3. This picture is of:
A) a pipe cutter
B) one of the torture devices used in the Saw films
C) a guillotine dehorner, used by dairy farmers to chop off cows' sensitive horns
D) a Halloween haunted house prop
4. In nature, cows may nurse their calves for up to _____ years.
5. After years of being kept almost constantly, forcibly pregnant and having their beloved babies repeatedly taken away from them so that their milk can be sold instead, when cows' milk production wanes, they are:
A) put out to pasture on the farm to live out their days
B) retired to a sanctuary
C) feted with cake and alfalfa-flavored ice cream
D) sent to slaughter
6. True or False: A Holstein's spots are like a fingerprint—no two cows' spots are exactly the same.
7. Guys, get ready to squirm: Male calves who are taken from their mothers are usually _______ without so much as an aspirin.
8. True or False: Like people, cows communicate with each other using different vocal sounds, body positions, and subtle facial expressions.
9. A dairy industry study reports that by the time they are killed, nearly _____ percent of cows are lame because of the intensive confinement to the concrete floors of milking barns, the strain of being kept almost constantly pregnant, and being made to stand ankle-deep in their own dung.
A) 10
B) 20
C) 30
D) 40
10. True or False: Bovines love a good brain teaser, such as figuring out how to open a gate's latch to let themselves out, and they get so excited that some even kick up their heels when they figure out the solution.
*****
Check out the answer key below to see how you did, and then repost some of these interesting cow facts to show your friends why it's sour to steal cows' milk.
To enter to win The Compassionate Cook, just leave a comment telling us how you did on the quiz. A winner will be chosen at random. (Your score on the quiz does not affect your chances of winning.)
The contest will end on October 25, 2012, and we'll contact the winner by October 29, 2012. By commenting here, you're acknowledging that you've read and you agree to our contest terms and conditions and our privacy policy and you're also agreeing to our collection, storage, use, and disclosure of your personal info in accordance with those policies as well as to receiving e-mails from us.
Answers: 1) shed tears 2) True 3) C 4) three 5) D 6) True 7) castrated 8) True 9) D 10) True
It's been a few years since Casey Affleck graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but he popped up on campus in a new video, asking everyone to be kind to cows—by dumping dairy products.
A PETA supporter wearing a cow costume showed students at Casey's alma mater an undercover dairy farm exposé, "Dehorning: Dairy's Dark Secret," that the vegan actor narrated for PETA. The video shows calves and cows thrashing and crying out as they undergo intensely painful dehorning, in which farm workers gouge out or saw off the restrained animals' sensitive horns or burn away the developing horn tissue—all without any painkillers.
Students found the cruelty in the video hard to stomach, but they loved the free boxes of rich chocolate soy milk, agreeing that it's easy to do away with dairy products with just a few simple swaps.
Want more Casey? Watch his vegetarian testimonial and then join his campaign to end the abuse of animals on factory farms.
Written by Jeff Mackey
PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman, who's also the mother of a child in the California public school system, has written to the administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service asking that the service pull all beef and cow's milk from school lunches after mad cow disease was discovered in an animal at a California rendering plant.
A group of parents who are "DAM MAD" (Dads Against Meat and Mothers Against Dairy) also converged on the Sacramento headquarters of the California Department of Food and Agriculture to urge it to protect children by pulling meat and dairy products from school lunches.
What's truly mad is continuing to feed beef and cow's milk to students, especially because "spent" cows, whose milk supply is exhausted by the dairy industry, are the primary concern when it comes to mad cow disease and are likely to end up as the kind of cheap ground beef that is fed to schoolchildren.
Given that the USDA has expanded its quarantine to a second dairy farm, that it still has not located the infected cow's mother or siblings (who may also have the disease), and that it doesn't even know what the California dairy industry is feeding its cows (because that's considered a "trade secret"), the USDA must stop risking our children's health and remove beef and cow's milk from school cafeterias right away.
Tracy's letter and the demonstration by the DAM MAD parents coincided with another PETA appeal to the USDA urging Secretary Tom Vilsack to correct misleading statements that he made regarding the detection of the disease—also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)—that created a false and dangerous sense of security by erroneously claiming that the nation's human and animal food supply is safe.
In the letter to Vilsack, PETA points out that there is no way to know how many other animals are infected with mad cow disease because only a tiny fraction—about 0.1 percent of the nearly 34 million cows who are slaughtered every year—are tested for BSE. It's also likely that milk from the cow who tested positive entered the food chain, and contrary to the USDA's assurances about the safety of milk, studies have already shown that another form of the disease can be spread from mother to baby through milk.
Worried that tainted milk or meat may be on your child's lunch tray? Don't wait for the USDA to act. Protect your kids (and yourself) by packing healthy and humane vegan lunches—and keep it up at breakfast, dinner, and snacktime, too!
After Michigan mom Natalie Hegedus was verbally reprimanded by a judge for discreetly breastfeeding her child in the back of a courtroom, PETA jumped to the support of Hegedus and other moms by seeking to place our pro-breastfeeding billboard near the Paw Paw courtroom where the mammary melee occurred.
Mary © Susan Saladino
Breastfeeding is natural—stealing milk from cows so that we can feed our babies the milk nature intended for calves is not. The consumption of cow's milk has been linked to asthma, constipation, recurrent ear infections, anemia, diabetes, zits, and even cancer in children.
Human mothers who opt to feed their children breast milk should be commended, not censured. Women should be encouraged to give their children the healthiest possible food and leave cow's milk for calves.
A recent article in USA Today reveals why so many dairy-lovin' adults spend too much time in the loo, cutting the cheese.
According to the article, titled "Sixty Percent of Adults Can't Digest Milk,"
[P]eople who are lactose intolerant can't digest the main sugar—lactose—found in milk. In normal humans, the enzyme that does so—lactase—stops being produced when the person is between two and five years old. The undigested sugars end up in the colon, where they begin to ferment, producing gas that can cause cramping, bloating, nausea, flatulence and diarrhea.
In other words, Gouda is no good for you and Swiss is a digestive miss.
The article continues,
Being able to digest milk is so strange that scientists say we shouldn't really call lactose intolerance a disease, because that presumes it's abnormal. Instead, they call it lactase persistence, indicating what's really weird is the ability to continue to drink milk.
It's time for milk-drinking "weirdos" to get off the can and discover the delicious world of dairy alternatives. They are better than cheddar and nicer than ice cream—for human health and for cows and their calves.
Written by Karin Bennett
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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