Got Soy Milk? New Investigation Underscores Reasons To Dump Dairy
posted by: Heather Moore 41 days ago
Most people understand why I don’t eat meat, but when I explain that I also don’t eat cheese or other dairy products, some people seem a little baffled. “Why, do they milk the cows too hard?” is a question I’ve been asked on more than one occasion. This shows just how far removed many people are from what they eat. They like to think of cows frolicking in open green pastures and being gently milked by kindly old farmers in overalls.
That only happens in storybooks.
On modern dairy farms, most cows are kept in feces- and urine-saturated grassless lots. Cows give milk for the same reason humans do—to feed their babies. But dairy farmers artificially impregnate cows every year so that they'll produce a steady supply of milk for humans. A typical factory-farmed dairy cow will give birth three or four times in her five-year life. None of her babies will taste her milk.
They are taken from their mothers soon after birth. Separating the cows and calves causes trauma and anguish to both baby and mother. In his book An Anthropologist on Mars, Dr. Oliver Sacks described a visit he and livestock industry advisor Dr. Temple Grandin made to a dairy farm, and of the heart-wrenching bellowing they heard:
“They must have separated the calves from the cows this morning,’ Temple said, and, indeed, this was what had happened. We saw one cow outside the stockade, roaming, looking for her calf, and bellowing. “That’s not a happy cow,’ Temple said. ‘That’s one sad, unhappy, upset cow. She wants her baby. Bellowing for it, hunting for it. She’ll forget for a while, then start again. It’s like grieving, mourning--not much written about it. People don’t like to allow them thoughts or feelings.’”
After they’re taken from their mothers, male calves are often sold to veal farms where they're chained in tiny dark stalls with slatted floors. Since the milk meant to nourish them winds up in the supermarket, they are fed a milk substitute that is purposely low in iron so they become anemic and their flesh stays pale and tender. They take their first weak, wobbly steps to slaughter when they are between 16 and 18 weeks old.
Female calves are turned into milk machines like their mothers. When their milk production wanes, the cows are sent to the slaughterhouse, where many are hung upside-down and skinned alive.
And this is just what happens under “normal” circumstances. On some large-scale dairy farms, conditions are much worse.
PETA conducted a five-month long undercover investigation of a Pennsylvania factory farm that supplies milk to Fortune 250 company Land O'Lakes—the largest seller of branded butter in the U.S. As you can see from the photos and video footage, cows at this farm are kept in pens filled with excrement, which causes foot and hoof problems and various illnesses.
One cow’s gangrenous, infected teat ruptured while she was being milked by a machine. Workers were told to tightly wrap the teat with an elastic band in order to "amputate" it. The cow's condition deteriorated over the next 11 days before she finally died. Calves rescued from the facility had pneumonia, "manure scald," ringworm, pinkeye, and parasites.
PETA’s investigator caught the farm's owner and one of his sons on video electro-shocking cows who couldn't stand up. One of the farmer's sons kicked a cow and jabbed her with a pocket knife. The men have been charged with cruelty to animals, but, if convicted, they only face up to 90 days in jail and $750 in fines—a mere slap on the wrist for their despicable behaviors.
PETA is calling on Land O'Lakes to buy milk only from operations that meet a 12-point animal welfare plan. Please send a personalized message to Land O'Lakes President Christopher Policinski, urging him to implement the plan immediately. But even more importantly, please choose vegan alternatives to butter, milk, cheese, and other dairy products.
Cow’s milk is natural for calves, not people. It is designed for calves to double their weight in 47 days, grow four healthy stomachs, and weigh 300 pounds within a year.
Humans are the only species to drink milk beyond infancy and the only species to drink the milk of another species. The amount of dairy products many people eat is becoming increasingly absurd. I wouldn't be surprised if pizza companies soon start peddling cheese-topped beverages to go with their cheese-stuffed-crust cheese pizza.
It’s easy to break your dairy addiction with all the dairy-free alternatives available today. Even Starbucks sells Silk, one of the best-known brands of soy milk. Tofutti, So Delicious, and Soy Dream are just a few of the widely available brands of nondairy frozen desserts, and butter-y spreads like Earth Balance are sold in most grocery stores. Pangea offers a variety of nondairy cheeses and vegan chocolates and other goodies, as do most large health food stores.
Cow’s milk is for cows. Please, if you haven’t already gone vegan, take the Vegan Kickstart pledge today.
Read more: animal welfare
comments
So a castrated bull is a happy cow? What of all of the male calves? Are they happy to be taken away from their mothers, to be sold at auction like slaves? Or the cows that are to be forced to give you milk instead of to her baby? You miss the point entirely. It's the principle behind keeping animals as machines, as soulless, heartless, mindless creatures that have no worth outside of what they can do for you. It's about taking a life and exploiting it for it, treating it like it's a commodity. It doesn't matter if it's an animal or human (we are animals too so stop forgetting that), there are basic rights that we all should have. They have a right to a free life as much as any human, but you would deny them that. How about an animal having the right to live it's full life expectancy, and not having it cut short but a third or a lot more. If we have the option to live a full healthy life without animal products, yet we choose to continue to use and kill them anyways simply for our pleasure, how is that possibly morally sound?
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understand.
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Sumiko, do you have a reading comprehension problem? I grew up raising animals to EAT. I've worked dairy farms, large and small as well as horse farms (quarter and standard bred) and have raised, butchered, hunted, fished and cleaned my own meat, & grown, harvested and preserved my own vegetables and herbs.
Do you think I've never been to a slaughterhouse? Do you think I don't know how cow-calf pairs act when they are weaned? Have you ever watched a cow reject a calf? I have.
And I am not denying the horrible cruelty on ALL dairy farms because that simply isn't true. Until you've actually worked on a variety of different farms and ranches and seen the DIFFERENCE between a large dairy operation and a factory dairy operation, you have nothing of consequence to say to me.
I've worked with animals my whole life. I've helped breed, birth, raise and yes, slaughter some of them and eat them. I've raised everything from beef steers to quail and ducks and butchered and prepared them myself. If you want to bleat about ALL dairy farms being cruel and evil, I can't stop you. But it does nothing at all for your cause to lie or to speak from ignorance. Because that's what you're doing. My point isn't that all dairy operations are good and saintly, but that they are not by FAR all bad. I speak from actual, real life experience, not websites.
I've said MANY times that factory farming of anything is not sustainable. I don't know what is so hard about that to understan
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Heather O, most people with heart cannot separate mother cows and their calves knowing heart breaking cry of mother cows while their babies are way to veal factory!
I wish I can drag you to slaughterhouses and let you see actual slaughter of cows and their calves.
Stop denying about horrible cruelty in all dairy farms.
www.notmilk.com
All people who consuming dairy products are responsible for most horrible torture and cruel death of cows and their babies.
Why you never want to speak about horror in bloody slaughterhouses where cows and calves are tortured to death?
Unlike our companion animals, farm animals are killed with bullets and knives while they are in full conscious.
Would you like to be killed with knif and bullet like billions of farm animals are killed?
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Oh Stephan D, you are laughable. I have worked on and been around numerous dairy farms in my life. My questions rise from most vegans and animal activists never really knowing what exactly they are protesting and never having had any real life contact with actual ranches and farms.
And given the opportunity, any mammal will ingest milk regardless of its age or species. My dog was very eager to drink the expired breast milk I had pumped and not needed to use.
I'm a farm girl. I've always been a farm girl, and I've lived much closer to my food than most of the most virulent and dedicated vegans. Working on a small dairy farm and a large one are surprisingly similar. Keeping the herd healthy is imperative for the all, not just profits. Some cows are going to be butchered, that's a given. Some will be auctioned off, and others will be castrated and raised as steers for a variety of uses. If you don't treat your animals right, they won't treat you right, and any farmer worth his salt knows this very simple fact. Happy cows are productive cows. There's bad apples in any industry, and factory farming isn't sustainable. However to say that dairy products are indigestible by humans at all is erroneous at best. There is a reason that man domesticated cattle, and that is for its power (in farming and hauling), for meat, for their hides and for their milk.
Don't drink milk or eat meat if you don't want to, but try not to delude yourself. It's unhealthy.
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Oh and I have met and touched many a cow, including some horribly emotionally and mentally scarred rescued dairy cows.
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I'm not sure how preg testing a cow or knowing all about it's urine is relevant to this discussion or shows anyone how dairy farming on the whole is not negative. Regardless of what kind of farm it comes from, large or small.. it contributes to killing baby cows for the veal industry. After all, what good are male calves on a dairy farm? Also animals are not a commodity to be used and treated like a machine. Either way all dairy is unhealthy since humans are simply and clearly not meant to ingest it at all. We are the only species to ingest breast milk beyond infancy, and it's not even from our own species! It's meant to add hundreds of pounds to a baby cow in a short period and also give it species specific things to help it grow and be healthy. The cow stops drinking milk as a child.. so why do we think it's possibly natural and ok to keep doing it as adults? there are so many cruelty and animal free way to get calcium, Vitamin D, protein etc.. Leave them out of it! They deserve to be free as much as we do.
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Heather, a Green Star is coming your way...
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"I say, all dairy farms ARE bad. We do a great deal of undercover work throughout this nation, and there is nothing kind about farms where the animals are used for selfish human beings.
But all dairy farms ARE bad!"
And you are an authority on this subject, how again? Have you ever actually worked on a dairy farm? Been involved with large herds of cows, or even small ones?
Have you ever even touched a cow? Stepped in cow patties? Realized that you can tell the difference between horse urine and cow urine instantly? Have you ever helped a cow give birth? Ever pregnancy tested a cow? Ever bottle-fed a calf whose Mama rejected him?
I have.
What have you done? Please. I want to know.
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* Sarah D. says * Oct 16, 2009 2:28 AM
You can't assume from this one article that all dairy farms are bad.
I say, all dairy farms ARE bad. We do a great deal of undercover work throughout this nation, and there is nothing kind about farms where the animals are used for selfish human beings.
But all dairy farms ARE bad!
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