If you thought the end of 'Veganuary' might mark a cooling of the debate over the environmental impact of milking cows, don't look up when driving into Gloucester.

No stranger to bold media stunts, animal rights campaign group PETA has hired prime advertising space in the city centre to drive home a plea for dairy farmers to switch their focus to plant-based food production.

PETA booked one of the city's most prominent billboards, at 39A London Road, to urge farmers to "MOOve on" from rearing cows for dairy production.

Lucy Watson, campaign spokeperson, told Punchline-Gloucester.com that the move was made in direct reaction to the Shire Hall's backtrack over advice to residents to reduce their carbon footprint by cutting down on the white stuff.

Commuters heading into the city will now be greeted with the message: "Dairy farmers: It's time to moove on. The future of farming is vegan."

Ms Watson added the decision to hire the space was triggered by "Gloucestershire Council back-tracking its advice urging locals to drink vegan milk – we are hopeful that the plea will encourage farmers to get out of the doomed cow-exploiting industry and embrace sustainable, animal-friendly plant farming."

Coinciding with the now annual Veganuary campaign, which organisers say has helped see a 370% growth in veganism since 2019, GCC launched the advice to buy plant milk as part of its "Swaps in seconds" campaign, which encouraged lower CO2 consumer habits by urging residents to make easy changes for green alternatives.

But the move triggered fury in some farming quarters across the county. Jenni Hobbs, a dairy farmer in Elmore, said her production system had recently undergone a carbon audit which showed that found production generated 0.93kg of CO2 per litre of milk, a lower figure that the UK average of 1.25kg CO2 per litre.

Although the giant ad appears on the side of The Flower Bowl premises, which has been run as a family business for 90 years, the owner, who asked not to be named, said she did not endorse PETA's message.

She told Punchline: "The ad space is rented out to Alight Media in London, through my step-mother; they lease it and then another party selects the adverts so it is not something we have any say in. We support local farmers and we have a greengrocery side of the business which relies heavily on locally grown produce. We don't agree with stopping dairy milk."