Near naked protest aimed at persuading humans to stop drinking milk
Martin Shipton
A nearly naked 33-weeks pregnant charity worker staged a one-woman protest outside Cardiff Market to highlight what she argues is the dairy industry’s cruelty to calves.
Wearing little more than earrings resembling the tags spiked through cows’ ears, chains around her feet, and a milk-pumping bra, Kate Werner, who is expecting twins, drew attention to what she sees as a simple fact: that just like humans, cows produce milk after giving birth to nourish their babies.
She urged shoppers to leave cows and their calves in peace by going vegan.
Werner is the senior campaigns manager for PETA – The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Foundation, a UK-based charity dedicated to establishing and protecting the rights of all animals.
She said: “Mother cows in the dairy industry are treated as milk-producing machines, forcibly impregnated again and again so the milk made for their calves can be stolen and sold to humans.
“As I approach the birth of my babies, it’s heartbreaking to think of other mothers having theirs taken from them shortly after they’re born, and how this could be ended if everyone chose vegan.”
Werner added: “Mother cows, like mothers of all species, form instant bonds with their newborns, but in the dairy industry, their beloved calves are taken away from them, often within hours of their birth. Cows are forcibly inseminated by workers who insert an arm all the way up to the elbow into the restrained cow’s rectum and insert a metal rod into the cow’s vagina to deliver semen.
“Newborn males are usually slaughtered for veal, while female calves endure the same fate as their mothers, until their bodies wear out and they’re sent down the ramp to their own slaughter just like their mothers before them.”
PETA, whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”, points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a cow is a dog is a boy. The charity argues that, like humans, other animals are capable of suffering and have interests in leading their own lives; therefore, they are not ours to use for experimentation, food, clothing, entertainment or any other reason.
PETA and its affiliates around the world says it seeks to educate policymakers and the public about cruelty to animals and promote an understanding of the right of all animals to be treated with respect.
It works through public education, research, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement and protest campaigns. PETA believes in non-violence and does not advocate or support actions in which anyone, human or non-human, is harmed.
Bearskin
One of PETA’s other current campaigns is aimed at persuading the Ministry of Defence to stop members of the King’s Guards from wearing tall bearskin fur headwear as part of their uniform.
The actor Stephen Fry narrates a video on the subject that can be seen on PETA’s website, PETA.org.uk.
Fry states: “In Canada, black bears are mercilessly killed by trophy hunters. Their fur may then be used to make the caps worn by the King’s Guard – purely ornamental headgear that serves no military purpose.
“A PETA US investigator went undercover in the Canadian province of Ontario, where hunters buy tags that give them licence to slaughter bears using guns or crossbows.
“The bears are baited with buckets filled with bagels, biscuits and oil, making them easy targets. Bears who are shot don’t always die outright. They may flee and endure a slow, painful death from infection or blood loss, only to be found hours later after the hunters follow their bloody trail. “Once located, the bears are disembowelled and dismembered. Their body parts are often kept as trophies. The bear’s fur is prized, so hunters may sell it to auction houses where it can be purchased by suppliers. It takes the skin of at least one bear to make a single cap.
“By continuing to purchase caps made of black bear fur, the UK Government drives demand for pelts and effectively incentivises hunters to bait and kill bears.
“A faux bear fur has been developed that meets all criteria outlined by the Ministry of Defence and performs better than bearskin in a number of areas. Yet the MoD refuses to make the switch.
“Every day that our soldiers wear hats made from the fur of slaughtered bears brings dishonour to our country. It’s time for a changing of the guard: tell the MoD to go fur free.”
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We’ve been drinking milk for millennia. We’re not going to stop now.
Maybe not, but we can change our dairy farming practices to make them more humane.
Have you researched dairy farming to find out just how cruel it is? Calves separated from mothers to increase milk outputs is incredibly distressing for both the calf and the cow.
A lactation cycle in a cow is elongated if milked. In humans the lactation cycle is of a fixed term. Cows have an estrous cycle for reproduction but humans don’t. It’s the reason why women menstruate, a cycle that kicks back in after giving birth. Milking a cow just maintains the production of milk long after the calf needs it.
Maybe not, but we could implement more ethical dairy farming practices such as keeping calves with cows for longer. Try researching for once rather than just being dismissive.
As per my other post below, I wonder why meat eaters feel so threatened by vegetarians, vegans and animal rights protesters.
Well I’m going to. Ms Werner’s most arresting protest has done it for me.
More middle class poshos piling pressure on working class Welsh people. I wonder why PETA keeping on the people of Wales. Their colonialist approach absolutely stinks.
I wonder what it is about vegetarians, vegans and animal rights campaigners that makes meat eaters who couldn’t care less about animal welfare feel so threatened? Firstly, how do you know that she is a ‘middle class posho’ as you so dismissively describe her? In my experience it tends to be the middle class and the more reactionary elements of the working class who want to defend the status quo (such as our supposedly god-given right to eat animals). Incidentally, I’ve personally known (by which I mean known closely enough to consider them friends of mine) two vegan animal rights… Read more »
MoD can definitely go fur free.
Milk is fine but animal welfare needs to be at the forefront and caring farmers don’t handle the cows the way she describes with forced impregnation and taking the calves away. It does happen unfortunately but it doesn’t need to be.
As you say, caring farmers don’t farm in the way she describes. Unfortunately, they are very much in the minority and the majority of dairy farms do separate calves from cows causing both an enormous amount of distress. As you also say, it doesn’t need to be this way.
Oat Milk is far superior…
Agreed. Especially in coffee
Do your research. I used to think that. High in sugar & inflammation. Milk traceable to a given farm is best.
I’m a vegetarian not a vegan so I do eat eggs, dairy, honey etc. For animal welfare reasons, I would be very happy to switch to vegan, so long as I could find broadly equivalent nutrition in equivalent products at equivalent cost. I know that the first two are eminently achieveable (although tofu, “vegan egg replacement” and “vegan cheeses” are rank), but the latter is an issue for me. There is a vegan tax I just can’t afford to pay. Why can I get 4 pints of skimmed milk for £1.75 but 2 pints of oat milk costs £2.20? Dairy… Read more »
No denying the cost to produce milk and meat is becoming a heavy burden in the world with man made global warming.
The cost of oat milk is a burden too … to the customer. It’s way less processed than cow milk and less costly to grow oats than keep dairy cows. But more than twice the cost!! Stop the price gouging and make it more affordable. I’ll be happy to switch.
Then we just need to crack oat cheese or nut cheese
It lasts longer you need less of it and it makes the best oats even better.
Are fags about about a quid each and god knows what a pint is!
Oh! and ask a farmer what they think about the price of milk…
Not in my house. We drink loads of milk. My breakfast is usually banana and bran flakes and oat or cow, I use the same amount of milk. At the same time, milk farming (and meat farming) are both heavily subsidised AND farmers are screwed over by the supermarkets that are their biggest customers. Oat milk by comparison is cheap to produce but sold as a luxury product so they can screw you over on price. Cheapest I’ve see is Lidl for 89p for 2 litres but I don’t want to go to Lidl just for one thing because i… Read more »
Mostly I drink black coffee but co-op earl grey and ‘minor figures’ oat milk, by far the best (hard to get unless one shops with father christmas 6 at a time £12, same with T-bags local coops rarely have it) makes a very refreshing cup of tea, coop used to do it briefly before they went anti-woke and sacked Suma products. Change of riders at the top of the company made a right mess for a while…the joy of glorified sweet shops they call a town center…
I get mine from a farmer, rather pay him than the supermarket.
An oat farmer? You can’t get ‘Minor Figures’ in SMs maybe waitrose
All my beef and milk is from Carmarthenshire. Grass fed. Growing and eating grass is not pollution.
Really ‘not pollution’!
What about the nitrogen run off from the slurry and fertilizer used just for starters.
The scientific argument for all but eliminating animal fat and protein from our diet is compelling. Other factors will come increasingly into play.
If farmers don,t adapt including changing to becoming and mamagers delivering multiple outputs and benefits then within three decades the typical family farm here will be an endangerd rare breed.
There is no scientific basis for eliminating animal fats from the human diet. That was a myth generated by the sugar and food processing industry in the 1990s. Now debunked.
Please provide a link to a reference to back up
‘There is no scientific basis for eliminating animal fats from the human diet’
OK.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36216940/
Dear me. Try again
That research paper focuses on the effect or not of eating unprocessed red meat on various health issues.
NOT that animal fats are essential to our diet
Of course, the question they never answer is what would we do with our dairy herds if we weren’t using them for milk? They would make impractical pets.
Never had Bison milk but I know where there is a herd, probably a bit like having an eagle feather back in the days of the Great Spirit then who turns up but shipfulls of religious nutters. Plus that distant cousin Madog and his countryman John Evans of Waunfawr and hear the story of how his map opened up America for Lewis and Clark then if of interest you could read Gwyn A. Williams’ books…
DNA of bovine lactose have been found on neolithic pottery. Clearly identifies prehistoric consumption of cows milk. This confirms the archaeology showing settlement sites which have corrals for such livestock. This pre-dates grain cultivation
Have a hell of a bbq
I suggest the stuntster, Kate Werner, visit her anti-natal class. She poses as statue in the street while heavily pregnant while at the same time as producing breast milk. This is impossible. The hormones which kick in to produce breast milk are absent until she gives birth. Lactogenesis does not occur until between 48 to 72 hours postpartum, the first expression being colostrum, only after that stage will she start producing milk. A stunt and campaign based on ignorance.
Good point!
Another one is that a cow has four teats
Clearly as well as being ignorant she,s deficient in the nipple department.
By the way dairy cows are milked until two months bdfore givng birth . Just over 80% of their pregnancy.
The ‘stunster’ is at 33 weeks preggers is just under 80% of the way through hers. So image wise it,s comparable
PS i,m not a vegetarian or a vegan
Or a Gentleman…