Sales of almond, soy, coconut, and other plant-based milks are soaring, on track to reach $20 billion by 2020. Meanwhile, consumer demand for dairy is tanking as Americans become aware of just how cruel the dairy industry is to cows, how it has cheated consumers, and the havoc that dairy milk can wreak on our bodies (got lactose intolerance?).

As each generation consumes less milk than the one before it, Big Dairy is panicking. The industry is left crying over spilled milk—literally, dumping millions of gallons of unwanted milk down the drain.

Big Dairy is desperate, and it’s turning to the FDA to help squash the rise of plant-based milks. In 2010, the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) urged the federal government to block the use of words like “milk” and “cheese” on the labels of dairy-free products. Six years later, that hasn’t worked, so the NMPF is back at it, this time by whipping up members of Congress to write to the Food and Drug Administration about how such labeling is “misleading and illegal.”

Truly misleading, however, are current dairy product labels, which do not state what’s really inside: bovine mammary secretions, produced by cows and comprising just the right mix of proteins and hormones for their calves to grow hundreds of pounds in mere months.

If it is in NMPF’s own interest in ensuring that labels “clearly identify the true nature of the food,” as noted in its 2010 petition, why not clearly identify dairy as “cow milk?” (*this language was updated from an earlier version).

The NMPF claims that it’s worried about confusing consumers. That’s exactly why the NMPF should label its own products as “cow milk,” “cow cheese,” and “cow ice cream.” That way, consumers will understand what they're really buying.

After all, cow milk is produced by cows (for cows and their calves), so why not just say it?!

Many consumers are no longer swallowing the industry’s lies about happy cows and healthy bones. More and more people are choosing nutritious and delicious plant-based milks over cruelty- and cholesterol-filled cow milk. Join us in calling on the NMPF to make it easier on shoppers to know the “true nature of the food” they’re buying by clearly labeling its products as Cow Milk.