OK - So I'm bored...... At least I'm not mentioning NOS parts or brake
fluid.
>From the Newletter of Alpha Phi Delta Fraternity....
* PETA says 'Drink Beer, Not Milk' to Prevent Cruelty to Cows
>From Washington Times,
Animal rights activists are urging college students this week to guzzle beer
to save cows from the
"cruelty" of being milked. But the "drink beer, not milk" effort by the
Norfolk-based People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals is losing its fizz - and friends.
MADD has asked PETA to pull the campaign for fear it will encourage underage
drinking. The group's
"Got Beer?" nationwide campus campaign was timed to take advantage of St.
Patrick's Day celebrations.
"We're very concerned and appalled with it for the simple fact that underage
drinking is the #1 drug prob-lem
among American youths," said Teresa Hardt, of MADD.
But local animal rights activists said PETA's campaign was devised simply to
catch people's attention and
get them to think about milk. "Milk is not a health food, and it is the
reason for tremendous animal suffer-ing,"
said Mary Zoeter, president of Actions for Animals Network.
The "Drink Beer" campaign comes at a time when increased attention is being
focused on binge drinking
on campuses, where the majority of students are under the legal drinking age
of 21. "If PETA's misguided
purpose is to denounce the dairy industry, they certainly aren't advancing
the ball by advocating alcohol
consumption by college students," said David Botkins, spokesman for State
Attorney General Mark Ear-ley,
who led a Task Force on Drinking by College Students in 1998, after five
undergraduates at Virginia
schools died after ingesting too much alcohol.
Bruce Friedrich, PETA's vegetarian campaign coordinator, said "Nobody's
going to put beer on their
Cheerios or get drunk and drive as a result of our campaign." PETA contends
that milk does not do a body
good because it is full of fat and cholesterol, while beer contains neither.
PETA's main beef is with what it
says is the cruel treatment of cows and their calves. "Dairy cows are
warehoused like so many inanimate
objects, kept pregnant by artificial insemination to keep milk production
high and slaughtered when they
are spent after a few years," Mr. Friedrich said. Female calves face the
same fate, while male calves are
slaughtered for veal, he said. "That's why there is a hunk of veal in every
glass of milk," Mr. Friedrich
said. "If you drink milk, you are supporting a product that is horrible for
human health, catastrophic for the
environment and a living nightmare for the animals involved."
Farmers, however, are skeptical of the argument. What would be a nightmare
is if the cow isn't milked at
all, said Joe Plesniak, a former dairy farmer. "To think milking a cow is
cruel is ridiculous," Mr. Plesniak
said. "The cow was made to produce milk and to be milked. It's a relief for
the cow to be milked. It's cruel
if you don't milk the cow. Then it suffers.
Michael Graziano
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