Cheeseheads, beware! The crazy but creative folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who recently made local headlines after gracing ASU with their controversial presence, have headed to Packer country with the most ridiculous idea since Busch Light.
In recent weeks, the udder-hugging organization asked Wisconsin Gov. James Doyle to change Wisconsin's official state beverage from milk to beer. Their argument: Beer is healthier than milk.
As much as this statement helps to substantiate college students' arguments ("the alcohol only kills off the weak brain cells, leaving nothing but a colony of super-smart cells to control my brain"), it's clearly a bunch of hormonally altered tripe.
In director of Vegan Outreach Bruce Friedrich's letter to Gov. Doyle, he attempted to use humor to get the governor to consider changing Wisconsin's state beverage, a request about which PETA is all too serious.
He wrote that the official beverage change should be made "since Wisconsin's most populated city is 'Brew City' (courtesy of the Pabst and Miller fortunes), [and the] state is home to the world's largest six-pack, Old Milwaukee and Milwaukee's Best beers, 20 independent brewing companies, and, of course, baseball's Brewers."
What Mr. Friedrich forgot to add was that the University of Wisconsin-Madison, located in the very state capital to which he posted his letter, is home to one of the largest Dairy Science departments and pasteurization research facilities in the country.
Furthermore, Wisconsin is called "America's Dairyland." IT'S ON EVERY STATE LICENSE PLATE. According to the University's Dairy Science Web site, Wisconsin leads the nation in production of milk and dairy items, supplying 15 percent of the United States' milk and 31 percent of its cheese annually.
Dairy farmers, who make up 70 percent of Wisconsin's farming market, bring $3.5 billion to the state every year. These facts are arguably more important to Gov. Doyle than the morale of the Milwaukee Brewers (especially with last season's record!).
Cutesy only works when you do your homework.
In the interest of fairness, I took a look at PETA's anti-milk Web site, www.dumpdairy.com, which promised hard evidence for why humans should say "No!" to "Got Milk?" The copy was so laughable that if I didn't know better, I would think this is an extended spoof by The Onion or an early April Fool's joke.
I could choose from an information menu of milk-induced illnesses, including "sick children," "pus," "flatulence," "acne," and, to top of the stupidity with a bit of irony, "lactose intolerance."
The fact that none of the above headings compare with the dangers of alcohol not only discredits the organization and its cause, but devalues people living and dying with serious illnesses attributed to alcohol: alcoholism, cirrhosis, memory loss and depression, just to name a few.
Credible spokesmen like "Pimply Patty" and "Chubby Charlie" provide sidebars to the tracts against milk, a "gas-giving, obesity-inducing, acne-producing beverage." Having no more than a single reference to a Harvard health study about drinking alcohol in moderation, the PETA Web site lacks insight but makes up for it in grotesque insult.
This campaign is not a new one but rather a reinvigorated one. Released two years ago on college campuses nationwide by passing out beer cozies and bottle openers to students (as if we need the encouragement), PETA's "Got Beer?" campaign raised the ire, quite justifiably, of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving and nearly every other person who sees the national epidemic of underage binge drinking as a bigger deal than the distended udders of dairy cattle.
But PETA members brought back the beer ads with full force in a letter to Gov. Doyle. They included mortality data on cattle, including, and I quote, "More than one-tenth of the average herd of cows is dead before the age of 2 from illness or injury caused by horribly unnatural diets and genetic breeding."
One stat they selectively left out was that, according to the 2000 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report, "motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for people from 4 to 20 years old." More than 40 percent of accident-related deaths that year involved alcohol.
PETA's letter to poor Gov. Doyle is as gimmicky and incoherent as its Web site and the rest of its extreme publicity tactics. If lives were saved, human or bovine, by degree of shameless or offensive propaganda, PETA would do much more good than it purports to do now under its thinly veiled front of animal-rights compassion.
By ignoring the rash of irresponsible underage drinking behavior its anti-milk campaign is only helping to glamorize, I've got only one question for PETA: Got Conscience?
Katie Petersen is an English and biology junior. Reach her at katie.petersen@asu.edu.
