PETA Apologizes to Giuliani

September 5, 2000

The president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has apologized to New York Mayer Rudolph Giuliani for "any distress" an advertisement may have caused him. The ad showed Giuliani with a milk mustache and the tag line "Got Prostate Cancer?" It was meant to illustrate a link between milk and prostate cancer.

Ingrid Newkirk said the "dairy parody ad" would be withdrawn immediately. "What we do is intended to be provocative, not hurtful..." writes Newkirk in a letter faxed to the mayor's office. Billboards in the dairy state of Wisconsin were being taken down and other ads were being canceled.

PETA supporter Bill Maher, of ABC's Politically Incorrect, was posing in Los Angeles late last week for a PETA ad that will replace the controversial Giuliani parody. PETA will unveil the new ad on the opening day of the World Dairy Expo in Madison, WI, Oct. 4.

The ad was designed as an attack on milk, specifically on the plight of veal calves, their "dairy cow" mothers, and the ill_health effects of drinking milk. The ad wasn't an attack on the mayor, "but a lot of people took it that way," PETA said.

"Our goal was to get people to stop lamenting and start preventing," PETA added, "not to think, `If the mayor can get prostate cancer, there's no hope for me,’ but to think, `Perhaps there are ways I might avoid this disease.’ Of course, we also wanted people to hear our argument that buying a carton of milk contributes to the cruel confinement of calves to `veal crates’ and to other misery for animals associated with dairy consumption. We wanted to point out the healthy options, like soy milk and calcium_fortified orange juice."