PETA India Delivers Plea for Calves During Nationwide World Vegan Month Campaign

Group Encourages People Across India to Ditch Dairy to Help Calves

The Voice of Chandigarh – “Male calves are discarded like trash because they can’t produce milk. Go vegan.” That’s the sky-high message from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India, popping up in cities nationwide for World Vegan Month (November). The campaign calls attention to the common dairy-industry practices of separating calves from their mothers shortly after birth, then abandoning the males, allowing them to starve, or selling them to be killed for their flesh and skin since they cannot produce milk. Some dairies even use khalbacchas – stuffed dead calves hung or propped up on sticks – to try to trick mother cows and buffaloes into lactation. A Nagpur man was recently booked for this and other cruelty to cattle.

PETA India’s billboard in Chandigarh is located at Puncom Chowk, Near IVY Hospital. The billboard also appears in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai. Video footage of cruelty to cows and buffaloes in the dairy industry can be downloaded here.

“Calves deserve to stay with their mothers and nurse, yet this industry commonly casts off the males to die so that humans can steal the milk nature intended for them,” says PETA India Senior Campaigns Coordinator Radhika Suryavanshi. “This World Vegan Month, PETA India encourages everyone to recognise that cow and buffalo milk belongs to calves, not humans.”

The dairy industry also supports the beef and leather industries, which are able to exist in India largely because the dairy sector supplies them with spent and unwanted animals. What’s more, University of Oxford researchers found going meat- and dairy-free can reduce an individual’s carbon footprint from food by up to 73%. And doctors tell us dairy consumption in humans is linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, and other ailments.