“Moove On, Dairy Farmers!” Giant Cow Calls for Switch to Vegan Farming Ahead of Balmoral Show

The plea – placed just ten minutes away from the showground – urges farmers to moove on from the cruel dairy industry and embrace kinder, greener vegan farming – for the sake of mother cows and their babies, the planet, and human health.

The billboard is located at the intersection of Mercer Street and Sloane Street, Lisburn, BT27 5AJ and is live for two weeks.

“Consumers are switching to vegan milks in record numbers, and if farmers don’t want to be left in the dust, they need to cut ties with the violent, wasteful, and unsustainable dairy industry now,” says PETA Vice President of Vegan Projects Dawn Carr.

“The future of farming is vegan, and PETA is urging dairy farmers to embrace growing crops like oats for sustainable vegan milk.”

Cows used for dairy are artificially inseminated, and their calves are taken from them shortly after birth so that their milk can be sold and consumed by humans instead.

Male calves, who are considered a by-product by the dairy industry, may be shot in the head soon after birth or sentenced to a short, miserable life before being carved up for veal.

Most female calves are destined for the same fate as their mothers: they’ll be used as milk machines until their bodies give out, and they’re slaughtered for cheap meat.

1 in 8 dairy farmers plan to quit the industry, and 48% of British adults are now drinking plant milks – including UK-produced oat milk – which contain none of the artery-clogging animal fat and cholesterol of cows’ milk and are better for the environment.

Government data show that the consumption of cows’ milk in UK households has almost halved in the last 50 years.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way” – notes that farming animals for food is a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, and pandemics, and as Northern Ireland faces a looming deadline to reduce its climate emissions by 48 per cent by 2030, vegan farming is the inevitable future.