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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals made headlines recently after sending Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson a letter asking him to change the state's official beverage from milk to something "more healthful and humane" such as soy "milk." PETA’s letter was filled with the typical animal rights nonsense about milk -- that it’s "liquid meat" that causes everything from heart disease to cancer to osteoporosis. As PETA’s Bruce Friedrich summed it up, "If the milk industry did not spend so much money promoting milk, it would be listed as a health risk."
Pretty standard fare for PETA except that beyond its alleged health risks, PETA Chairman Alex Pacheco claimed that Wisconsin’s selection of milk as its state beverage might also be racist. See if you can follow the logic here.
Some members of minority groups are to one degree or another lactose intolerant -- most mildly so. Therefore choosing milk as a state beverage is racist or as Pacheco put it, "a white choice in more ways than one."
It is because of proclamations like this that Wisconsin Farm Bureau spokesman Tom Thieding pretty accurately describes PETA’s predicament. "I think they overplay their hand," Thieding told Scripps Howard. "I don’t think the general public takes them seriously, especially when they do things like this and shout down children at Oscar Mayer events [PETA has been sponsoring protests of Oscar Mayer’s Weinermobile]."
Source:
"Animal-rights group PETA attacks milk as 'liquid meat'" - Amy Rinard, Scripps Howard, July 23, 1998.