PETA has never shied away from controversy in its efforts to promote animal welfare, from its well-known campaigns seeing celebrities posing in birthday suits rather than wear fur, through to adverts comparing meat consumption to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, the Holocaust, and trying to convince Ben & Jerry’s to switch to human breast milk. And the dairy industry has once again come under fire from the organisation, which recently tricked members of the public into drinking dogs' milk in place of the bovine variety.
The campaign, designed to encourage British consumers to stop consuming so much cows' milk during the year, where more than 5.2bn litres are poured from cartons every 12 months, with a further 6m litres used in other dairy products. In total, the UK’s dairy industry produces enough milk to fill 4,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools annually.
“Human’s are the only species to drink another animal’s milk, and cows’ milk is no more natural for us than dogs’ or rats’ milk would be,” claims PETA. The animal-rights group argues that the dairy industry is cruel to cattle, forcing cows to produce calves and taking them away from them, and then slaughtering milking cows when they stop producing enough milk.
In the video, a woman on the street offers members of the public free sample of Farmhouse Milk, only to be told that their cups are filled with milk produced by female dogs. The public reacts as you would expect them to.
In the interest of animal welfare, PETA revealed that no dogs were milked for the making of their campaign, but that samples of soya milk were served instead. You can watch the campaign video below:
