Today is Open Farm Sunday. Every year, dairy giant Arla invites the public onto farms across the country. The events are designed to feel wholesome and reassuring, offering visitors the chance to meet farmers, walk through barns, pet cows and calves, and enjoy the idyllic image of farming that the industry is so keen to promote.

At first glance, it appears to be an exercise in transparency. Visitors are encouraged to believe they are seeing the reality of dairy farming with their own eyes. However, what these carefully managed events actually provide is a heavily warped version. We must counteract this effort. 

Help Expose the Reality

It is absolutely imperative that we show the nation what happens on dairy farms on a day like today. The footage below was taken on an Arla dairy farm last year, we recorded horrific acts of abuse at Lowfields Farm and it appalled the nation. But we need to remind the public of the grotesque reality because Arla continues to welfarewash and greenwash, creating a smokescreen of misinformation.  

Will you help us by sharing our video? Together we can push back against the industry’s propaganda machine and show the nation what farming actually looks like. 

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The Reality Hidden Behind the Marketing

What the public is not shown is the routine separation of calves from their mothers shortly after birth, a practice that causes distress for both animals and exists so that milk intended for calves can instead be sold for human consumption. They are not shown the physical toll placed on cows whose bodies are pushed to produce increasingly high quantities of milk year after year, often leading to exhaustion, injury, and declining health. Nor are they confronted with the fact that when cows are no longer considered profitable, they are ultimately sent to slaughter.

These realities are not rare exceptions within the dairy industry; they are fundamental parts of the system itself. Yet events like Open Farm Sundays are carefully designed to keep those aspects hidden from public view. Visitors are presented with clean barns, grazing cows, and selective moments that create the impression of an industry built entirely on care and compassion. The uncomfortable truths that make dairy production possible are deliberately left out of the picture.

Transparency Means Showing Everything

If Arla genuinely believed the public supported the realities of dairy farming, there would be no need to control what people see so carefully. True transparency would involve opening the doors to every aspect of the industry, so let’s show the public the reality!

As always, 

For the Animals!

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