Higher Education or just High?: UC Berkeley students protest Domino's Pizza for thanking cows for milk

1/29/2015
Gabriella Hope

UC Berkeley’s Organization for Animal Advocacy staged a protest at a local Domino’s Pizza.

The students were protesting a Domino's pizza box design that thanks dairy cows for making pizza “cheesy and delicious” with their milk.

Pic via Berkeley Organization for Animal Advocacy Facebook Page.

Thanking cows for milk is “animal exploitation,” according to students at the University of California, Berkeley.

Members of UC Berkeley’s Organization for Animal Advocacy gathered outside a local Domino’s Pizza recently to protest the chain’s latest pizza box design, which allegedly endorses the ‘rape and forcible impregnation’ of dairy cows.

"This was our attempt to acknowledge the folks in the dairy industry and thank them for all their hard work."    Tweet This

Printed atop pizza boxes, the design thanks dairy cows for their milk since it’s a necessary ingredient in most Domino’s pizzas.

“This pizza couldn’t have been made without help from Stella, Edna, Abigail, Estelle and Nancy… [w]ithout them, your cheesy and delicious pizza would be, well, less cheesy and delicious,” the ad reads.

“Today we’re protesting Domino’s recent advertisements that 'thank' dairy cows for their 'help' in enabling them to make pizza,” BOAA wrote on their Facebook page on the day of the protest. “It is never okay to rape someone, steal their children and milk, or kill someone for palette pleasure. Help us speak on behalf of dairy cows today.”

For one hour, roughly 20 students stationed themselves in front of the popular pizza chain equipped with a variety of signs which read: “milk comes from grieving mothers,” “dairy cows are exploited for their breast milk,” and “all animals deserve to be free.”

In an attempt to equate cows to humans, one protester suggested the ad disrespected his own mother.

“I’m here because I love my mom, and I would never want her to endure a life of violence and violation,” he said.

UC Berkeley junior and BOAA co-president Kitty Jones said the ads were “extremely misleading” and demonstrated “corporate humane-washing.”

“It makes it look like they care about animals’ lives, when really they make massive profits on animal exploitation,” Jones told the Daily Californian.

Tim McIntyre, vice president of communications for Domino’s, said the pizza boxes—which have been in circulation since summer—were intended to be “a nod to the hardworking men and women at dairy farms across America.”

“This was our attempt to acknowledge the folks in the dairy industry and thank them for all their hard work,” McIntyre told Campus Reform, adding that “of the 47,000 dairy farms across the nation, most of them are family-owned and they care about the well-being of their animals.”

According to McIntyre, the protesters’ claims that Domino’s slaughters cows is a misrepresentation of a company that simply “[buys] meat and cheese from very renowned, very reputable providers.”

“The implication that we own and slaughter animals… we don’t. We care about the welfare of the animals that are used in our food products,” said McIntyre.

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