PETA has a penchant for preposterous protests. Ingrid Newkirk, the president of the animal rights group, released an outraged statement deploring Nintendo for taking up the Billings Farm & Museum’s recent challenge to compete against them in the 1-2-Switch video game, which has a cow milking minigame.
Last month, the Woodstock, Vt.-based educational dairy farm invited the Japanese video game company to learn about milking cows and to do battle against two of its employees to see whether the video game makers or the farmers could milk cows the fastest. Not one to turn down a challenge, Nintendo took them up on the offer.
Feeling left out, PETA issued a letter to cry about the event and expressed its disappointment with Nintendo for having “taken all the cruelty out of milking.” PETA maintains that dairy farming is a heinous practice where “cows are exploited for their milk,” and that it is “NEVER that pleasant for these animals.” We were unable to receive comment from any cows to validate or dispute PETA’s claims.
PETA is calling upon Nintendo to implement a “realistic simulation” of cow milking, stating that 1-2 Switch needs to show every aspect of dairy farming.
“To simulate cow milking accurately, 1-2-Switch would need to show all aspects of dairy farming, including the violent insemination of cows on what the dairy industry itself refers to as a ‘rape rack.’ Cows produce milk to feed their babies, but their young are torn away from them soon after birth so that human beings can use their milk instead,” PETA’s complaint reads.
“A mother cow will bellow for her calf for days after the baby is taken from her. Perhaps you could add these sounds to your game in order to remind players that by drinking milk, people support an industry that separates mothers from their babies.”
The organization also offered to provide Nintendo with video footage of the “filthy conditions” of dairy farms. PETA suggests that, should Nintendo find such things distressing, they ought to instead “switch to simulating activities in which no animals suffer” and provided an almond milk minigame in which players pick almonds as an alternative. Enthralling!
It’s worth noting that no cows are actually milked—much less harmed—in the video game. It’s not real, PETA.
Source: Heatstreet, Ian Miles Cheong