Not a correction, but a warning

The March 22 post here was about a Land O’ Lakes milk supplier in Pennsylvania, where dairy animals were badly abused. The letter I also wrote to Land O’ Lakes resulted in an answer, received today.

In the four-paragraph letter, the company’s “consumer affairs specialist” reported that the “member” site complained about (with conditions documented in a video on PETA’s website) had been “found not guilty on all counts by a Magisterial District Judge in Pennsylvania.”

So on one hand, terrible abuse and conditions (documented in a video on the PETA website)that Dr. Temple Grandin had described as “absolutely atrocious.” On the other hand, there’s Land O’ Lakes’ claim that “we take providing high-quality animal care very seriously.”

I phoned PETA and spoke with a staffer familiar with the issue. She wasn’t at all surprised by the black–white dichotomy. In places like that dairy farm, “cows are not seen as animals, but as production units,” she said. (And of course, how could they be mistreated?)

This is an alert to animal activists. Keep going! Keep protesting what you know is wrong! And don’t believe everything you hear or read – especially when it comes from a source with a vested interest in protecting itself and its business.
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