They wanted to raise awareness, so they stuffed a cow and hung it in their restaurant.

(This post originally appeared on The Washington Post)

This is not a stunt. It’s an ethical act to raise awareness about dairy production. That’s what the owners of Etica, an Adelaide, Australia pizza restaurant, say. But some in the town, according to Adelaide Now, are calling it obscene, shocking and “utterly disgusting.”

The stuffed, eight-year-old body of the long-deceased black-and-white Friesian-Hereford cross (that’s a cow to you and me)–once named Schvitzy–prominently hangs by its rear hoofs from the ceiling of the restaurant’s very visible glass atrium. As you can imagine, it has been creating quite a disturbing picture not just for the pizzeria’s diners but for anyone walking or driving by who happen to look inside its huge windows. The owners, Federico and Melissa Pisanelli, insist that Schvitzy “was slaughtered at her owners’ farm and her meat was ‘entirely consumed’ before her skin was stuffed.”

“The installation has a mission,” they wrote on their company’s Facebook page. “It aims to draw a connection to the true consequence of consuming dairy. We do not aim to influence on whether one should consume dairy, but rather, we urge our consumers to understand the origin of their food in order to make a conscious decision on whether to eat it.”

Whatever the intention, the response has been swift and vitriolic. People have called the owners sensationalistic. News of the cow’s display has drawn reactions from all over the world, with one woman posting a change.org petition asking the owners to remove Schvitzy from the ceiling. The petition has attracted more than 4,000 signers so far.

The Pisanellis don’t seem concern their display might be a turnoff. Their aim is to better educate their customers’ “programmed perceptions” about where their food comes from.

“Etica believes it is much more powerful to make an informed choice rather than adopt an ideology that one does not completely understand,” they wrote.