Animal Rights Group Says It Doused State Fair Butter Cow With Red Paint

The famous butter cow sculpture at the Iowa State Fair was covered in red paint by vandals sometime early Sunday, the Des Moines Register reports. 

Vandals scrawled "Freedom For All" on a window in the room, which is in the Agriculture Building. 

Butter cow sculptor Sarah Pratt came in Sunday and scraped the paint off, Iowa State Patrol Sgt. Scott Bright told the newspaper.

"The butter cow is something people come to the fair to see," Bright said. 

No arrests have been made. Police are reviewing camera footage as part of the investigation, Bright said. 

A group that calls itself Iowans for Animal Liberation claimed responsibility for the vandalism in an email to the Des Moines Register. The email said group members hid in the Agriculture Building until it closed.

"The paint represents the blood of 11 billion animals murdered each year in slaughterhouses, egg farms, and dairies," the group's email to the Register said.

The 2013 sculpture honors an Iowa landmark’s anniversary with a replica of the Lincoln Highway Bridge in Tama and a relief sculpture of Abraham Lincoln. As the nation celebrates the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address, Iowa’s Lincoln Highway is also reaching a milestone. One of the first transcontinental highways for automobiles in the U.S., the 100-year-old highway stretches from New York to San Francisco.

According to the fair's website, in 1911 J.K. Daniels sculpted the Fair's first butter cow and was succeeded by  J.E. Wallace of Florida. In 1957 Earl Frank Dutt of Illinois took over the sculpting duties. Norma “Duffy” Lyon of Toledo, Iowa, began sculpting in 1960, becoming the fourth person and first woman to sculpt the Fair's butter beauties. Lyon passed away in June of 2011.