Dairy Industry’s New Campaign Targets Millennials

Lobbyist organization Dairy Good launched a multi-pronged campaign targeting millennials last week that included a story published Tuesday by mock-newspaper The Onion. The article linked to a series of four videos called “The Udder Truth” that feature a different dairy farmer speaking against the “misconceptions” regarding the industry. In one, farmer Joe Kelsay explains why calves need to be removed from their mothers by saying, “A calf weighs about 80–100 pounds when they are born, but their mother weighs maybe 1,500 pounds, and with those kinds of animals in the same kind of space you can imagine there may be some dangers.” Another video features farmer Annie Link equating her 2,000-cow dairy farm to having a big family while telling viewers that they “don’t have to go to Twitter and read the mean tweets” about factory farms. Mollie Waller, chief communication officer of Dairy Management, Inc., stated the goal of the videos is to “target the ‘moveable middle’ and help draw them back into the great things dairy is.” All four videos attempt to dilute the ongoing horrors uncovered by organizations such as Mercy For Animals, Compassion Over Killing, and People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals.