This offensive ad gets one thing right: cows are maternal, sentient beings. In the video, that fact is exploited for comedic purposes. But if you know what the dairy industry entails – a life of suffering – you know this video is not funny at all.  Out of all the animals exploited for food, I personally believe dairy cows have it the worst: When they are no longer useful to the dairy industry, they get sent off for slaughter to become meat.

In the video, the cow is overtaken by emotion when the human child is off to school; in that scenario, the cow has trouble letting go of her “baby.” In real life, when her real-life baby is taken away, she will also have trouble letting go.  Cows experience grief, pain, and sadness, and those emotions manifest physically. Please compare such a scene of real-life suffering to what you see in the milk ad.  Watch this powerful 60-second video from PETA where workers at dairy farms explicitly say the cows get upset when their babies are taken.

Think about if further. How do we get so much milk? Cows only produce milk when they have a baby; therefore, throughout their life on the dairy farm, they are repeatedly impregnated and their babies are repeatedly taken away. Cows become pregnant through artificial insemination, which is performed on what the industry terms a “rape rack.”

And I haven’t even discussed what undercover activists can uncover, like the abuses at the DiGiorno dairy supplier.

The child in the video is a kindergartener, probably around 5 to 6 years old, being coddled by her dairy cow.  No dairy cow is likely going to survive past kindergarten. Real California Milk doesn’t want you to know that in real life, dairy cows will be “spent” after a few years, at which point they’ll be transported to slaughterhouses. Naturally, cows can live up to 25 years of age. But when you’re  exploited for milk and food, your lifespan is cut by two-thirds. See more at “The Humane Myth.”  And the child in the video? The dairy industry exploits cows for their milk while simultaneously lying to our children; see my previous post on why you should say no to milk.

Of course, the dairy industry needs people to believe that cows are happy and more importantly, that their milk is ours to take.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a “family farm” or a “factory farm.” We’ve condemned these animals to a life of suffering and exploitation.

Further Reading:

• Milk of Human Kindness Denied To Dairy Cows (Forbes)
• Torture and Infanticide: Why Vegans Don’t Eat Dairy (VeganRabbit)
• What Is a Rape Rack? Why Feminism Applies To Cows (veganfeminist)