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The Dark Side of Dairy: Part 1

Our new report lifts the lid on modern dairy farming, shattering its benign image and exposing the immeasurable mental and physical suffering inflicted on millions of cows and their calves every year. It serves as a wake-up call for everyone who is opposed to animal cruelty yet continues to buy and consume dairy products.
http://www.milkmyths.org.uk/

Cows produce milk to feed their babies just like humans. It flows for the best part of a year and then stops. More milk requires more babies. That’s the reality of dairy farming, the visible obvious side of the industry. But there is another, cruel, much darker side to dairy which few see and even fewer know about.

I know from personal experience of the healing powers of a dairy-free, vegan diet. But the more I discover about cow’s milk and dairy products, the more I am convinced that my decision to avoid them entirely is the right one. It isn’t just the 400 million pus cells that are allowed in every litre. It isn’t only the hormones and growth factors that promote some cancers. And it isn’t solely the lactose and casein, responsible for so many allergies. It is the obscenity of taking new-born calves away from their mothers so we can have their milk – a product designed by evolution for little cows not little people, or big people for that matter.
“I wholeheartedly support Viva!’s campaign, the Dark Side of Dairy which exposes the cruelty behind dairy farming. I am also actively involved with the Vegetarian & Vegan Foundation’s White Lies campaign which shows how consuming cows’ milk is destroying our health.
Heather Mills, patron, VVF and Viva!

Desperation

Despite the myth of contentment, a dairy cow is the hardest worked of all farmed animals. She nurtures a growing baby inside her while simultaneously producing up to 120 pints a day of milk. To keep the flow going, she is forcibly impregnated every year and her babies are taken away a day or two after birth, year, after year, after year. Professor John Webster (Bristol University’s Farm Animal Husbandry Unit) compares this cruel and punishing physical burden to ‘a jogger who goes running for six to eight hours every day, which is a fairly lunatic pursuit ’.

Separation

Cows produce milk for a reason. They are female mammals who need to feed their young, just like us. And the process with makes it happen is also the same: pregnancy, birth and suckling. No babies, no milk. The final, cruel twist is that dairy cows are allowed to suckle their babies for just a day or two after which they are taken away.

Exhaustion

A dairy cow’s milk begins to dry up nine to 12 months after giving birth, when her calf would be weaned. This is bad economics so, to keep the milk flowing, she is artificially inseminated two to three months after giving birth. The result? A crushing double burden of pregnancy and lactation for seven months out of every 12. It inevitably takes its toll – excrutiating mastitis (udder infection), lameness, infertility and low milk yield. A quarter of all UK cows, mostly under five years old, are culled every year - physically exhausted.

Distortion

Her young would suckle five or six times a day but milking takes place only twice. Up to 20 litres of milk can accumulate in her udder, making it protrude between her hind legs. This distortion results in an unnatural stance and lameness. Over half the UK herd suffers this way every year but many animals go untreated because while they manage to produce milk, they are still profitable.

Incarceration

You see cows in the summer when they’re at pasture. The other six or seven months are spent indoors on hard concrete, adding to leg and foot problems. Many of today’s dairy cows are now too big for the indoor cubicles they inhabit, finding it difficult to lie down, rears protruding into the slurry-covered aisles. An unnatural diet of high protein feed can release toxins into the bloodstream and cause inflammation of sensitive foot tissues.

Contamination

Mastitis is painful and there are over one million cases a year in the UK. Routine use of antibiotics has failed to control it and milk from infected cows containing up to 400 million pus cells per litre is legally sold for human consumption.
One teaspoonful of milk can contain up to two million pus cells.

Isolation

Female calves mostly follow in their mother’s footsteps and replace the cows who are killed each year. The first six to eight weeks of life are usually spent in tiny stalls, making exercise and socialising with other calves impossible. No mother’s milk for them, just commercial milk-replacer. At 15-months-old, artificial insemination begins – as does their gruelling life as a milk machine.

Destruction

Male calves can’t produce milk. If they are dairy/beef crosses they are sold to beef farms, with calves as young as seven-days-old enduring long journeys to and from livestock markets. Around 40 per cent of UK beef comes from the dairy herd.

Pure dairy males simply aren’t ‘beefy’ enough but nevertheless, some are intensively reared indoors for ‘low quality’ beef. But most are shot soon after birth and are usually disposed of by the local hunt, which feeds them to the hounds (even after the hunt ban).

Around 100,000 newborn dairy calves are killed in Britain each year – unwanted by- products of milk production