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World Society for the Protection of Animals
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Find the answer with Keep Cows on Grass: a WSPA campaign launched on 25 October 2012. Focusing on the welfare of cows that provide our milk and cheese, this European campaign exposes the world of ‘indoor’ farming, in which cows might never feel the sun or stand on grass.
Our campaign targets four of Europe’s key milk producing countries.
Denmark, where a swift expansion in indoor farming has seen the vast majority of dairy farms disappear… Sweden, where cows’ access to pasture is legally protected… The UK, which has lost over 40% of its dairy farms in the last seven years… And the Netherlands, where the case against indoor milk is becoming established and our campaign is centred on higher welfare cheese production.
Across all these countries, fewer and fewer farms are keeping ever larger herds and producing more and more milk. And the animals and our environment are paying the price.
Producing huge quantities of milk, ‘indoor’ cows are often exhausted before their time and live shorter lives than they should. The unnaturally large herd sizes breed stress and aggression.
Indoor dairy farming creates pollution, is unsustainable, and strips thousands of animals of the chance to live a natural, healthy life. Or even to see the sky.
We need a more humane European dairy industry – one that is better for animals and people – before cows disappear from our fields forever.
We already know Europeans care. Our research showed that 71% of people across five countries would either never buy or would try hard to avoid milk from intensively farmed cows.
Let’s turn that feeling into action. Let’s Keep Cows on Grass. Take action now:
Find out more about the campaign (PDF) >>
On Thursday 25 October, Keep Cows on Grass was unveiled by our cow-themed team outside the European Commission in London.
On the same day a series of hard-hitting adverts were posted in train stations, on billboards and in newspapers in Denmark, the Netherland and Sweden, raising the key question: Where does my milk come from?
With this new campaign, WSPA wants to encourage consumers to demand for milk from cows kept on grass, before indoor farming takes a hold across Europe and cows disappear from our fields forever.
