PETA India Gets Flak For 'beef & Leather Industries Exists Due To Dairy Industry' Tweet

PETA India’s Twitter page has been among the headlines after it urged Amul to switch to plant-based alternatives by highlighting the ‘booming’ market of vegan products. After a message to Burger King India to come up with ‘vegan whoppers’, another post got the interest of netizens. The handle stating that the dairy industry helped the flourishing of the beef and leather industry did not go down well with netizens.

PETA India gets flak for 'beef, leather industry get cattle' from dairy industry post

The PETA India page is known for regularly sharing posts highlighting the ill-treatment of animals, while promoting a switch to vegan lifestyle. On Sunday, it posted that those wanting to drink milk, should drink milk for ‘humans not calves’ and suggested alternatives of milk made from peas, rice, soya, coconut, hemp, tiger nuts, macadamia nuts, walnuts, cashew nuts, almonds, oats, peanuts, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds or other plants.

A netizen then trolled the handle by stating that it would suggest ‘eating beef’ to anyone asking what use the cows would be of if people switched to non-dairy milk options.

PETA India then replied to the netizen that the beef industry got its ‘cattle to kill’ from the dairy industry. It added that beef and leather industries were able to ‘exist largely due to the dairy industry.’

Netizens, however, were not pleased. One wrote that unlike western countries, there were ‘gaushala’ (cattle care centres) in India, another found it ‘laughable’ that they suggested that supply led to ‘demand’. A user wrote that it should teach the West about meat consumption since they ‘bred cattle for meat’ and India, on the other hand, had a sizeable population of vegetarians.

One sarcastically wrote that cow slaughter would stop if people stopped drinking milk and another wrote that the industry would get cattle directly for slaughter even if the dairy industry did not exist. Another was unhappy about the suggestion of ‘extinction’ of milk-producing animals.