Many people don’t think of the dairy industry as being cruel – after all, cows aren’t killed for their meat as pigs are.
But the cruelties of the dairy industry are hidden behind false images of happy cows grazing on green fields.
For both mothers and babies, being part of the dairy industry is a painful, distressing, ugly way of life.
(Image courtesy of We Animals Media.)
In order to give milk, dairy cows must be pregnant or lactating continuously. They often have health problems such as retained foetal membranes and infections.
Dairy calves are taken away from their mothers in their first day of life, because their milk is destined for human consumption. The mothers bellow for days when their calves are removed.
Modern dairy cows have been bred to produce extreme quantities of milk. The huge udders lead to painful stretching of their ligaments, and the cows are susceptible to painful infections of the teats and udders.
Dairy cows are at risk of laminitis, an excruciating condition of their feet, caused by the weight of the unnaturally huge udders.
When a cow is past peak milk production, she doesn’t get to ‘retire’ …. She is slaughtered.
Image courtesy of We Animals Media.)
Like humans, dairy cows must produce young in order to lactate. They give birth to a calf every year.
The babies are taken away from their mums in their first day of life, causing immense distress to both mother and calf. They can call frantically for days, try to break down fences, or walk for kilometers to be reunited with their babies.
Female calves will grow up to join the production line of constant pregnancies and separation from their babies. They are routinely de-horned with hot irons, with no pain relief.
Male calves are a ‘waste product’ to the industry because they won’t be able to produce milk.
Every year around 800,000 mainly male calves are slaughtered in Australia before they are a week old to end up as pet food, fertilizer, and cheap cuts of meat. Others are kept in small pens for months to produce veal meat
The dairy industry tells us that we must drink milk or eat dairy products to avoid osteoporosis and hip fractures in old age.
In fact, countries with the highest intake of milk also have the highest rate of hip fractures.
One reason for this is that more calcium is excreted when the diet is high in animal protein. It is better to get calcium from plant sources such as legumes, nuts, seeds and leafy green vegetables.
Visit the http://dairycruelty.com.au/ to see more about what happens to mothers and babies in the dairy industry.
As if the hidden practices in the dairy industry are not enough, a horrible new practice is emerging throughout Australia. It’s called intensive dairying, or ‘cow barns’.
The dairy industry is now abandoning any pretence of caring about the welfare of the animals that slave for them, and is implementing large scale factory farming practices.
This new factory farming practice puts dairy cows in massive barns where they live 24 hours a day, without access to green pasture or sunlight.
They are milked three times a day and fed nothing but high energy TMR diets.
They have no green feed, no fresh air, no enrichment nor stimulation; instead, confinement, lameness, udder infections and tearing, and boredom.