The Dairy Industry
Like humans, cows are strongly maternal beings who form close bonds with their young. And like most mammals, only produce milk when they give birth. On dairy farms, even organic farms, cows are forcefully impregnated every year to keep the milk flowing usually by artificial insemination rather than natural mating. This requires workers to insert their arms into the cow’s anus to hold her cervix in place while injecting her with seme collected from a bull. This normally starts when the cows are 12 months old and are repeatedly kept pregnant their whole lives to keep them lactating.
The calves are taken away mere hours after being born to maximize profit so that the milk intended for them can be collected and sold for human consumption. Because if her baby was with her, the calf would drink it.
Over the days of separation, the mothers bellow day and night searching for their calves. They are known to grieve for days or even weeks.
The male calves, known as bobby calves, are considered useless to the dairy industry because they will never be able to produce milk. They are kept isolated for five days before herded onto a truck and sent to the slaughterhouse. They can be withheld food for the last 30 hours of their lives. The calves, starved, confused, and desperate for affection, cry for their mothers from the holding pens of the slaughterhouse where they will soon be killed.
They are stunned with an electric stunner with prongs that go into the calves’ heads and then hung upside down onto a conveyor belt. Those who avoid the stunner or who are improperly stunned are killed by the means of a knife across the throat while conscious.
A small number of male calves are grown out for longer, up to 20 weeks, to be slaughter for veal.
The female calves are also kept isolated, fed on powder milk replacer eventually to join the cycles after being impregnated themselves.
As stated before, dairy cows are repeatedly kept pregnant to keep producing milk. This leads to premature aging, exhaustion, and mastitis - a painful yet common condition in dairy cows which is inflammation and sometimes infection of the udder. Pus and blood in the milk of dairy cows are also common, so it is usually filtered, but not completely. In Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, up to 40,000 somatic cells are legally allowed in every milliliter of cow’s milk. In the US, it’s 750,000 somatic cells per milliliter. Somatic cells, most of which in this case are white blood cells, are the same substance the erupts on top of a zit, so it is essentially pus. The more bacteria, inflammation, and infection of the cow’s udder, the higher the somatic cell count.
When comparing organic milk to regular milk, the production and conditions are the same. Organic doesn’t mean cruelty-free nor does it mean they live their whole lives in green pastures. Either way, cows are repeatedly impregnated until they are exhausted. According to the USDA, organic milk must come from a cow that has not been treated with antibiotics or hormones - for either reproduction or growth.
When a dairy cow is finally too physically and emotionally exhausted to continue, she collapses. These cows are called “downers” as they produce up to 10 times more milk than they naturally would. These cows are sold for beef. It’s common in the industry, even on organic farms, for cows to “go down” after about four or five years. However, as peak milk production declines around four or five years, if there are any cows still left, they are killed for beef regardless (cow’s natural lifespan is 20-25 years). The dairy industry is the meat industry.
As a beef cow, you are raised for meat, but as a dairy cow, you are sexually exploited and physically and emotionally exhausted until you collapse and then are killed for meat. The dairy industry isn’t strictly milking cows; it’s doing so much more.
AustralianPigFarming, director. Dominion (2018) - Full Documentary [Official]. YouTube, YouTube, 9 Oct. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko&t=1403s.
images credited to @livekindlyco
