For Immediate Release:
May 22, 2023
Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382
Atlantic City, N.J. – Ahead of Succession’s final episode on May 28, star James Cromwell is taking over the Boardwalk with a message for Starbucks: Stop milking customers who choose vegan milks. The actor’s appeal appears on nearly 100 screens along the busiest stretch of the iconic walkway and within sight of two Starbucks locations.
“My friends at PETA and I are calling on Starbucks to stop punishing kind and environmentally conscious customers for choosing plant milks,” says Cromwell. “We all have a stake in the life-and-death matter of the climate catastrophe, and Starbucks should do its part by ending its vegan upcharge.”
In the dairy industry, calves are taken away from their beloved mothers so that the milk meant for the calves can be sold to humans. Once the cows’ bodies wear out after repeated pregnancies, they’re sent to slaughter. The industry is also a major contributor to the climate catastrophe: In the U.S., cow emissions are the primary source of the greenhouse gas methane, which is 80 times more potent in warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Starbucks has admitted that vegan milks are better for the planet than dairy milk, yet it continues to charge up to 90 cents more for them. Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Blue Bottle Coffee, Caribou Coffee, Philz Coffee, Panera Bread, Pret A Manger, and Noah’s New York Bagels already offer vegan milks at no extra charge.
The Boardwalk messaging blitz is the latest action in an ongoing campaign by Cromwell and PETA to pressure Starbucks to end its upcharge for vegan milks, which last year saw the star superglue himself to a Starbucks counter in New York. Atlantic City and New York are both filming locations for Succession.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
