By Diana Potter.
We all know people who are so enamored of their “witty,” oh-so-clever conversation, they have no idea that they’re not funny or even bearable to be around. We cringe and look away as their just-awful jests drop like stones into our ears — but sadly don’t plug them.
Sound familiar? Then, as a vegan, you’re perfectly poised to get a big laugh out of the UK dairy industry’s clueless attempt to hit back at the enormously successful Veganuary campaign.
Veganuary is a huge hit. As you know, every year many thousands of ordinary citizens and celebrities around the world sign up to eat no meat or dairy for the entire month.
Outraged at this global slander threatening its precious profits, the UK dairy industry — already losing big as non-dairy milk products gain ever-greater market share — decided they could do a Veganuary for themselves. They’d show those non-dairy types a thing or two!
Imagine a boardroom full of irate cow-killers, and this:
“How dare Veganuary attack our ultra-humane dairy industry, which does so much for people’s health and is so very kind to cows?” exclaim the dairy guys. “Okay, this is war. We’ll do our own monthly event to show everybody how really wonderful we are. Those Veganuary folks’ll be sorry they ever went up against US!
“And hey, we’ll call it Februdairy!” (Clunk.) “Great, huh??”
You get the idea. And you can guess what happened.
Februdairy has been trying to work for the past 3 years and has flopped. But that didn’t stop the dairy despots. They’d do Februdairy even better this year, and this time they’d score for sure. Ha!
Last laugh: This time, they made people mad.
Not only that, but Februdairy only served to showcase the industry’s animal cruelty, making it more obvious to more people.
And the folks who got mad? They got even. Just one example:
UK animal-rights charity Animal Equality created a billboard campaign that’s expected to reach 10 million people across Britain. The billboards are going up in nine major cities including London, Glasgow, and Cardiff (England, Scotland, and Wales), putting the dairy industry’s dreadful animal cruelty — “the true cost of dairy” — out in the open for all to see.
One billboard, with a photo of a calf wearing a numbered tag and clearly marked for execution, says, “95,000 male calves die for dairy every year.” The link is powerful, too: “dairysdarksecrets.co.uk.”
Ouch. Will Britain’s dairying-do execs learn from this? Will they finally stop trying to show themselves in a completely false “positive” light? Or will they continue, like our unwitty wiseacre, to believe they are so smart and so right, they surely must let everyone know?
Guess we’ll find out next year. Maybe they’ll try a new name. How about Februscary?
