PETA India One-Ups Cancelled ‘Hug-a-Cow’ Day With ‘Save-a-Cow’ Day with Sweet Calf Rescue

For Immediate Release:

21 February 2023

Contact:

Hiraj Laljani ; [email protected]

Farhat Ul Ain; [email protected]

Gurgaon – On Valentine’s Day, recently observed as Hug-a-Cow Day by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), a positive sentiment that was later withdrawn, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India celebrated Save-a-Cow Day instead. The group’s rescue team conducts scouting activities to find animals in need of medical care, and its other staff members and volunteers look out for animals who need help, too. During this process, PETA India’s Advocacy Officer Farhat Ul Ain spotted an abandoned male calf stuck in a ditch in Gurgaon, Haryana. He was suffering from a painful, open wound and was unable to bear weight on one leg. Farhat named the calf Valentine. Valentine was provided with medical care, and PETA India has now moved him to a beautiful sanctuary under fruit trees that is run by Animal Rahat.

“Valentine’s Day was the perfect day to show animals love, but I appeal to everyone to make every day Save-a-Cow Day,” says Farhat Ul Ain. “The easiest way is to not eat them, not wear them, and not to steal the milk they make to nourish their calves.” She points out that male calves like Valentine are often abandoned so that humans can sell the milk they would otherwise drink.

While Valentine is a bull and not a cow, PETA India reminds the public that helping bulls is good for cows’ hearts, too, because calves are separated from their mothers shortly after birth, which causes the mothers extreme grief. The males are starved, abandoned, or killed for their flesh and skin because they cannot produce milk. Some dairies even use khaal (skin or hide in Hindi) bacchas (babies) – stuffed dead calves hung or propped up on sticks – to try to trick mother cows and buffaloes into lactation.

The dairy industry also supports the beef and leather industries, which are able to exist in India largely because the dairy sector supplies them with animals. What’s more, University of Oxford researchers found going meat- and dairy-free can reduce an individual’s carbon footprint from food by up to 73%. And doctors tell us dairy consumption in humans is linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, and other ailments.

PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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