The ‘other white meat’
Extracts from a email I just received from PETA:
“Most people clearly love milk, yet how many of us really know the true pain that goes into every pint?
The life story of a cow in the dairy industry is one of great sadness and suffering. A cow has a natural lifespan of 25 years, but on a dairy farm, her body will be exhausted at just 4 or 5 and she will be slaughtered because she is no longer profitable.
Cows produce milk for the same reason humans do: to feed their babies. Yet each of the 2.1 million dairy cows on UK farms produces an unnaturally massive 6,770 litres of milk per year – 20 litres every day – far more than they could ever need.
Fed abnormally high protein diets and given large doses of antibiotics to prevent them from catching deadly diseases from all the faeces and urine that surround them, cows in today’s dairy industry have become mass-production milk machines. The pressure of 20 litres of milk cause a cow’s udder to protrude between her hind legs, leading to lameness and incredibly painful infections, which are further aggravated by milking machines.
To keep the milk flowing, cows are routinely kept pregnant. They are artificially inseminated only two to three months after each birth. Their babies are taken away from them after just a few days – long enough for them to make the special, unbreakable attachment that exists between a mother and a child.
Dairy industry workers have reported that both mothers and calves cry out for each other for weeks afterwards – they are heartbroken, desperate and alone. Their bonds surely are no different from those between human mothers and their children. Their sense of loss and sorrow must be unbearable.
A terrible life tethered in the veal crates – or death – faces male calves. Female offspring are forced to follow in their mothers’ footsteps – a life of forced pregnancy, loss and pain – as the next generation of dairy cows. The cycle never ends.”
(Original source: PETA)