PETA calls for Nintendo to remove Cow's 'cruel' nose ring from Mario Kart World
It's "a tool of cruelty that causes lasting pain and discomfort".
🐮 Animal rights group PETA has written to Nintendo to call for them to remove Cow's "cruel" nose ring in Mario Kart World
✍️ PETA has contacted Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa to explain the danger of nose rings to cows
🤷♂️ The organization said that the game is meant to be a "fun escape", and that's why the nose ring should be removed
📈 Mario Kart World has been a smash-hit for Nintendo as the Switch 2's pack-in title, with nearly six million copies sold since June 5
Animal rights group PETA has written to Nintendo to request that they remove Cow's "cruel" nose ring in Mario Kart World.
In a statement posted to their website, PETA said it had written to Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa earlier this week to explain that "nose rings are forcibly pierced through one of the most sensitive parts of a cow's body" for the purpose of controlling cows and bulls "to their death".
Further elaborating on the matter, the organization also said that no real-world cow would have the same "goofy grin" as the game character if they wore a ring – an instrument it called "a tool of cruelty that causes lasting pain and discomfort".
In addition, PETA said that it was as a result of Mario Kart World being "just a game" that the ring needed to be removed.
"Mario Kart is supposed to be a fun escape, not a reminder of the painful tools used on cows in the meat and dairy industries. No one wants to think about animal suffering while zipping around a race track.”
PETA has previously taken aim against other games from Nintendo, such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which it said "encouraged abusive behaviour towards fish and insects", and involved "tearing wildlife out of their homes and displaying them in cramped cases in a museum".
The Switch 2 recently surpassed six million sales in just seven weeks since launch on June 5, with 5.63 million copies of Mario Kart World, working out to an attachment rate of well over 90 percent for the pack-in title. Cow is also one of the game’s most popular characters, grabbing all the headlines when they were
Nintendo is set to offer another bundle for the console in October, with pre-orders open for the Pokemon Legends: Z-A bundle, although the Mario Kart World bundle is still a better deal overall.
Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.