People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
June 2011
You can help by refusing to buy any dairy products. The only truly happy cows are the ones whose babies aren’t torn away from them so that humans can drink the milk nature intended for calves.
You've no doubt seen the commercials with "happy" California dairy cows who
chat and gossip in lush green fields. Obviously, the part in which the cows
talk is fiction, but many viewers don't realize that the rolling green
fields are also figments of a marketing team's vivid imagination. Cows in
California are commonly raised ankle-deep in manure on crowded factory
farms, and a lawsuit filed by PETA this week is attempting to set the record
straight.
PETA is suing the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and
the California Milk Advisory Board for making false and misleading
advertising claims after we filed a public-records request for all documents
to substantiate the claims made in the “happy cows” ads, but the CDFA failed
to produce a single document supporting the commercials. We’re also asking
the court to order the agencies to stop running the ads and to turn over
thousands of pages of other documents that we believe will expose the extent
of their false claims, but which the CDFA is illegally withholding on
spurious “trade secret” grounds.
This isn’t the first time that PETA has tried to force the Milk Advisory
Board to stop lying to consumers. We sued the board in 2002, but the court
ruled that, as a state agency, the board could not be sued under
California’s unfair competition law. We then filed two complaints with the
Federal Trade Commission, one in 2002 and the other in 2009, but it refused
to take action.
You can help by refusing to buy any dairy products. The only truly happy
cows are the ones whose babies aren’t torn away from them so that humans can
drink the milk nature intended for calves.
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