This Sunday is Bobby Calf Awareness Day - a day to recognise the two million newborn calves who are separated from their mothers and killed every year by New Zealand’s dairy industry.

To mark the day, SAFE has launched a nationwide campaign with cinema ads, digital advertising, and billboards, including one placed outside Fonterra’s Auckland headquarters. The campaign also coincides with the tenth anniversary of SAFE’s internationally recognised Calf in a Glass campaign, which exposed the hidden suffering of bobby calves and forced limited reforms.

SAFE has invited Fonterra CEO Miles Hurrell to sit down over a coffee and talk about what a future without this cruelty could look like.

"Ten years on from Calf in a Glass, little has changed for calves," says SAFE Campaigns Manager Emma Brodie.

"Every year, calves are torn from their mothers within hours of birth, while their mothers call out for them in distress. It’s a cycle of suffering repeated millions of times, and it continues today."

"It’s time for Fonterra to start looking seriously at animal-free technologies and plant-based innovation that could end the killing of bobby calves for good."

SAFE says the cost of dairy is not borne by calves alone. The industry is Aotearoa’s biggest climate polluter and a leading cause of freshwater degradation yet continues to market itself as "sustainable."

"Protecting calves and protecting the environment are two sides of the same problem, and both demand urgent action," says Brodie.

SAFE is urging the public to mark Bobby Calf Awareness Day by going dairy-free this Sunday - a small action with a big impact for calves and the planet.

"Every dairy product on the shelf represents a calf taken from their mother," says Brodie.

"This is the hidden cost behind New Zealand’s dairy industry. Calves deserve better, and they cannot wait another ten years for change."

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