Concerned individuals
We must burn the house down to save it.
Eco-activists have doused UK supermarket aisles with milk – including Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and Waitrose, with Animal Rebellion spokesperson Robert Gordon telling LBC “we don’t have a choice”.
The co-ordinated protests from Animal Rebellion activists were staged across the UK, pouring milk down aisles and dousing displays in what they dubbed ‘Milk Pours’.
We must waste food in order to [something goes here].
Here they are in action. It’s quite unpleasant to watch, all that milk wasted, not to mention the mess they won’t be cleaning up.
John Lewis at the Edmund Pettis Bridge they’re not.
And the Waitrose in Comely Bank, Edinburgh! The staff there are very nice and polite.
I wonder if they trashed a Waitrose rather than an Asda or a Lidl because you would get a far less genteel clientele in those retail outlets. The Waitrosers would tut-tut and avert their eyes, the Asdans and Lidlers are a far tougher lot, and some could turn violent. Or perhaps that is their nearest supermarket – which says something of their class background.
Ah, I’ve read the article, and they have chosen the upmarket shops – more likely to get into the media, But at a time when milk has doubled in price, and there are more and more people using food banks, it looks fairly crass.
So in protest of animal exploitation, the products provided by animal exploitation should go to waste, thereby letting the animals be exploited for nothing? And do they know they are creating more demand for these products, and not less? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot…
Yes, nothing quite shows how much you care about people as making a big filthy mess for underpaid grocery store workers to clean up.
I guess it’s less dramatic if you pour bottles of milk on the floor and then pick up a mop and bucket and start swabbing under the counters and in the crevices.
Are they working together with the Throw-Soup-At-Paintings gang? Sounds about as useful and productive. In the good old days (if there were any such things), Greenpeace protesters in speedboats interposed themselves between whales and whalers’ harpoons. Publicity stunt? Damn right, but it shone a light on whaling and helped bring about an actual moratorium with the help of public opinion. What the fuck is this supposed to be doing? Do you reduce demand by destroying supply? (Sounds like the “War on Drugs”). I’m not unsympathetic to their cause. Reducing or eliminating the industrial exploitation of animals is a worthy goal, but I’m not sure this is the way to get from here to there. Without the advantages conferred by institutional capture, you don’t have the luxury of confusing people or turning them off. Hearts and minds, people, hearts and minds. If you’re not winning either yer doin’ it rong.
Maybe if they put their bodies between milk trucks and dairies, or blocked access to stockyards? Not that protest and dissent should require risk, but optics are important. How does your action connect with what you’re trying to achieve? This just looks like kids spilling milk. Big whoop. What’s your point? Without the sign, how does this action promote a “Plant Based Future?”
The way to prevent the consumption of cows’ milk is to prevent the production of calves.
In some places, that’s as easy as preventing the access of the AI people to the cows, although that’s not very easy, because of the difficulty of finding out who they are, let alone discovering their schedule.
It’s still easier than trying to prevent the production of calves locally. Good luck to anyone getting into the fields around here when the bull is busy.
tigger, I don’t know about England, but here in the US, the bulls don’t get busy with the cows. It’s done in a lab setting, where the sperm is removed from the bull, transported wherever it is requested (and paid for) and inseminated. The bulls don’t even get to have fun. (Though I think they do stimulate them using lesser worthy cows, and I suppose the bull doesn’t mind about their commercial worth.)
iknklast, I don’t know about England either; I haven’t lived there in twenty-two years. I’m in rural Ireland, and here we definitely have the dairy cows serviced by a bull. It’s extremely annoying, as he gets very vocal when he’s having fun. Even if it’s 2am.