Dairy

The dairy in­dus­try en­cour­ages us to be­lieve that cows na­t­u­ral­ly pro­duce milk for hu­man con­sump­tion.

In re­al­i­ty, cows lac­tate to feed their ba­bies, like all mam­mals. Th­ese ba­bies are torn from their mothers just days af­ter birth so their milk can be stolen by hu­mans. Cows and their calves form strong bonds and this se­pa­ra­tion caus­es in­tense dis­tress.

Fe­male calves may join the dairy herd to face the same cy­cle of con­s­tant preg­nan­cy and loss of their ba­bies. Other calves are reared for veal or slaugh­tered at just a few days old. Ev­ery­one who eats dairy is com­plic­it in the deaths of th­ese in­no­cent ba­bies with­out whom there would be no milk.

Cows are pushed to their phy­si­o­log­i­cal lim­its to max­imise milk yield, and now pro­duce more than 10 times the amount a calf would na­t­u­ral­ly drink. They may suf­fer chron­ic mas­ti­tis, lame­ness, and ke­to­sis, where the cow must metabolise her own body fat to meet the de­mand for milk. Dairy cows un­der­go rou­tine, pain­ful mu­ti­la­tions, such as tail dock­ing and de­horn­ing with­out anaes­thet­ic.

Cows can live for 20 years, but a dairy cow is killed at 3-5 years, as soon as her ex­haust­ed body stops pro­duc­ing pro­f­itable quan­ti­ties of milk. Dairy is a slaugh­ter in­dus­try just the same as meat pro­duc­tion.