After a week of pressuring, Mothers Against Drunk Driving successfully persuaded the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to change its controversial “Got Beer?” advertising campaign, which targets college students to drink beer instead of milk.
PETA parodied the well known “Got Milk?” slogan in the original campaign by replacing the word “milk” with “beer.” PETA altered its campaign to “Dump Dairy,” and focused attention on the suffering inflicted on cows and calves in the dairy industry.
PETA’s advertising literature listed data from the United States Department of Agriculture. A press release from PETA cites facts from the Department of Agriculture, including that beer has zero fat while milk is loaded with fat and beer has zero cholesterol while milk contains 20 mg. of cholesterol in every eight ounce serving.
Despite the claims, the press release also said PETA recommends fresh juices, soy milk and mineral water over milk or beer.
PETA College Action Campaign Coordinator Morgan Leyh said PETA’s intent was to urge college students to drink responsibly by not drinking milk to save the lives of cows, not just to better their health.
“We wanted to grab people’s attention by showing that drinking milk is unhealthy and contributes to animal suffering,” she said.
However, the campaign came under fire by health officials and groups concerned about drinking on college campuses.
Dietitian Kristine Almos from the University Health Center said PETA’s claims are misleading.
“Milk is nutritious. PETA misrepresented the facts in how they oversimplified the idea that beer is healthy,” she said. “An average glass of beer contains 150 calories while milk contains 90 calories. PETA’s mission is to stop animal agriculture. I think it is irresponsible to tell college students to drink beer, especially before Saint Patrick’s Day and spring break.”
Almos also said milk is packed with calcium, Vitamin D, phosphorus, riboflavin and high quality protein.
“By not taking in enough dietary calcium, students cannot reach their peak bone mass,” she said.
MADD’s National President Millie Web said she believes it is unethical and illegal to encourage young people to drink beer.
“We asked them to pull the complaint because they had obviously not studied the effect of underage drinking,” Web said. “We support the rights of animals, but people are our first interest.”
In a survey conducted by Memolink.com, which offers various on-line surveys to provide insight into students’ attitudes and lifestyles, it concluded that college students nationwide soundly rejected PETA’s recent claim that beer is more nutritious than milk. Ninety-six percent of the survey respondents also believe that drinking beer is less responsible than drinking milk.
Even though the original ad campaign was pulled, the anti-dairy campaign is still in effect. More than 3,000 students nationwide are part of the PETA action network, Leyh said. PETA is encouraging students to participate in this campaign by downloading a poster from the Internet of a missing veal calf, and posting it on their college campuses. The group also suggests distributing anti-dairy leaflets and preparing dairy-free recipes as a protest.
“With the revised advertising campaign, PETA wants to appeal to student education and hopes that by doing so students will make compassionate choices,” Leyh said.
Jennifer Neary, the co-director of the University’s Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said that while personally she supports the anti-milk campaign for health reasons, SETA is not connected to the PETA campaign.
Neary also said that SETA is working on activities for Earth Week 2000 regarding the environmental effects of raising animals on pasture land for human consumption.
“The [“Got Beer?”] campaign was obviously meant to make a point,” Neary said.
Freshman journalism major Erin Middleton said she doesn’t think drinking beer is a good alternative to drinking milk.
“Beer affects learning behavior and decreases ability to retain knowledge,” Middleton said.
Freshman business major Timisha Wilson agreed.
“Milk does a body good,” she said. “It won’t alter your ability to judge things.
“Even though whole milk has a lot of calories, skim milk has all the essential nutrients, like calcium, without the fat.”