Protect cows and their calves
Thank you for signing this important petition.
Before you go, remember that we are up against a huge, multi-million-pound industry. That is why one powerful way to ensure we can continue this difficult fight is by making a donation.
Abigail Penny
Executive Director Animal Equality UK
Thank you {firstname}!
Thank you so much for signing the petition. Small actions like this add up and change the world!
Animals trapped in factory farms are being silenced, but you can lend your voice to speak up for them. Please help by sharing this petition with at least three people who also care about animals.
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{firstname}, thank you again for your support – it will make a huge difference for animals.
Our brave investigators work incredibly hard to expose animal abuse so that, together, we can end it. Make a donation today to help keep them in the field.
Demand the Government helps farmers transition to plant-based alternatives to dairy – SIGN NOW!
Cows must be pregnant to produce milk – so every cow in the dairy industry is forced through pregnancy after pregnancy, then separated from her calf, usually within hours of birth.
Our undercover investigator filmed inside Madox Farm, a UK dairy farm. The footage aired on BBC Panorama, exposing routine cruelty most people never see: male calves killed for having no value, cows too exhausted to stand, and a system that treats animals as milk machines, not living beings.
Despite claims that British dairy is “high welfare,” this suffering is legal, routine, and hidden behind industry marketing. Sign the petition to demand the Government fund a kinder alternative.
A Message From Miriam Margolyes
A Cow’s Life
Dairy farming affects cows at every stage of their short lives. Here’s what the industry doesn’t show you.
Cows must be pregnant to produce milk, so cows exploited for their dairy are forcibly impregnated year after year.
Typically within hours of birth, she and her calf are torn apart so that the milk her body creates for her baby can instead be sold for human consumption. This causes clear, visible distress to both mother and baby.
Tens of thousands of male calves are killed in Britain every year – more than six lives taken every hour. A male calf will never produce milk, so to this industry, he’s simply not worth keeping alive. The vast majority are killed within their first two months of life. Many are killed within hours or days of birth.
Approximately one third of cows used for dairy suffer from lameness, caused by a life spent walking on hard concrete floors, and worsened by poor hoof care, malnourishment and infections.
The true number is likely higher still, as farmers often under-report cases. For many cows, every step becomes a source of pain.
Around 30 in every 100 mother cows also suffer from mastitis, a painful udder infection that causes swelling and discharge of pus. Treating it costs the dairy industry money, so some cows are painfully milked without ever being diagnosed.
A cow can live naturally for 20 years. But in the dairy industry, continued pregnancies wear her down and, at just a few years old, she’s exhausted. The dairy industry no longer believes she is profitable enough to keep alive.
She’s sent to slaughter, her body reduced to cheap meat and leather – decades of her life stolen from her.
Some cows never even make it as far as this. Every year in the UK, pregnant cows are slaughtered, many in their final weeks. Their unborn calves are fated to suffer through this process too, sometimes for several minutes afterwards.
Shift the Subsidies
British dairy farmers still receive millions of pounds in direct Government payments each year, with subsidies making up around a quarter of their profits! Meanwhile, almost half of Brits now regularly choose plant-based milks in their diet.
The nation is already choosing to end their support for this heartless industry.
The Government needs to see that the writing is on the wall for dairy.
Join us in asking the government to put our taxpayer money where it can do real good:
- Subsidise plant-based dairy alternatives, so the kinder choice is also the affordable one
- Funding farmers to rewild their land instead of farming animals on it
- Incentivising farmers to transition away from dairy and towards arable farming
A brighter future is within our grasp – if the UK leads, others will follow.
