Land O’Lakes is retiring the iconic Native American butter maiden that has appeared on its logo for the past 92 years.
The Minnesota-based company said it was phasing out Mia the butter maiden on its packaging as it “looks toward our 100th anniversary” and will soon replace her with farm owners “whose milk is used to produce Land O’Lakes products” instead.
“As a farmer-owned co-op, we strongly feel the need to better connect the men and women who grow our food with those who consume it,” Land O’Lakes President and CEO Beth Ford said in a February press release. “Our farmer-to-fork structure gives us a unique ability to bridge this divide.”
The change has already hit some supermarket shelves, and the company said more people would see the new logo across the country in the coming weeks.
Some critics have labeled the old logo racist, including North Dakota state Rep. Ruth Buffalo, who said its image went “hand-in-hand with human and sex trafficking of our women and girls … by depicting Native women as sex objects.”
“Yes, it’s a good thing for the company to remove the image. It’s kinda like with land acknowledgments, it’s a good gesture and a step forward. But we can’t stop there. We as a whole need to keep pushing forward to address the underlying issues that directly impact an entire population that survived genocide,” Buffalo said.
Land O’Lakes was founded by Minnesota dairy farmers in 1921 and has only changed its logo three times before: once in 1939, again in the 1950s, and another time recently when Mia was moved from a kneeling position to a head-and-shoulders view, according to the Pioneer Press.
