What’s wrong with dairy?

(Last Updated On: May 12, 2023)

What is wrong with drinking dairy milk? Nothing, if you are a calf, your mother’s milk is the best food and produced especially for you. But if you are a human, a lot is wrong with buying and consuming dairy products.

For many years I blindly consumed dairy products. “Cows need to be milked otherwise they’ll be in pain”–a ridiculous misconception which, I’m embarrassed to admit, I believed and didn’t question. That’s surprising since even as a kid I knew that female mammals, a woman or a dog, need to be pregnant and give birth in order to have milk. Somehow I didn’t ask myself how come cows have enough milk for everyone to drink all the time, and why would a cow be in pain if she isn’t milked? Wouldn’t she breastfeed her babies? When a friend told me some facts about the life of dairy cows and their newborns, I read and learned about it, and was horrified by the truth. I was also shocked by my own long time ignorance and blindness.

Cows being milked at a small-scale dairy and veal farm
Picture: Jo-Anne McArthur

Let’s look behind the scenes of the dairy milk production, spoiler alert, it’s a dark story. Cows, like human mothers, carry their babies for nine months and produce milk when they are pregnant and give birth. So how do cows in the dairy industry continue lactating in order to maintain a steady supply of milk for humans? First, female cows are forcibly impregnated, mostly through artificial insemination. The cows are strapped to a rack, referred to by the industry as a “rape rack”, and then inseminated by a person inserting their arm into the cow’s rectum to position the uterus, and forcing the artificial insemination gun with semen into her vagina.^[1] This takes place for the first time when a cow is about one year old, and then every year after. The semen is collected from bulls who are either coaxed to ejaculate into an “artificial vagina,” or forced via electroejaculation – shoving a probe into a bull’s rectum and shocking his pelvic nerves.

This is not the only appalling piece of the dairy story. If not for humans, a mother cow would nurse her baby for nine to twelve months, and she would bond with her calf similarly to other mammal mothers. However, newborn calves are forcibly taken away from their mothers within a few hours to a few days. Mother cow, like a human mother, mourns the loss of her babies. She’ll bellow for days (one case of such cries alarmed residents living nearby a dairy farm), pace, and may stop eating.

But what happens to the calves? Male calves are considered a surplus to all the dairy farmers and are often not desired breeds for “beef” production, so they are sold to the veal industry. They spend their brief life confined or chained in stalls. Space is restricted to stop them from moving as this makes the meat redder and tougher. The calves, being unable to move, must stand in their excrement. They’re restricted to an iron deficient diet that consists mainly of liquid milk-replacement and antibiotics. Their life typically lasts for eighteen to twenty weeks, and their white, tender meat known as “veal” is sold for a premium price, and around 10% of them die from their harsh living conditions prior to slaughter.^[2]

Their unnatural environment and stressful conditions lead to a high incidence of stereotypic behavior and illnesses. In the UK more than 90,000 male dairy calves are shot soon after birth every year because there is no market for them. Female calves will be raised to replace their mothers and spend their first two months of life isolated or, in group pens, motherless. It has been demonstrated that both mother cows and calves possess intelligence and emotional sensitivity, and suffer as a result of this cruel separation.

After her baby is taken away from her, the mother is put to work. In most dairy operations in the U.S. and other countries, cows are being milked on hard concrete floors, connected to milking machines. They are subjected to routine painful procedures such as tattooing, ear tagging, and tail cutting, which are often performed without anesthesia. Those practices stem from the industry’s desire to maximize profits while minimizing costs.^[3]

And as with any business where animals are exploited for profit and human benefit, and used as tools and commodities, animal cruelty is inherent and rampant. “Every single time that we send investigators undercover into America’s factory farms, they emerge with startling evidence of animal cruelty and neglect,” said Nathan Runkle, executive director of Mercy for Animals in an ABC News report about a New York dairy operation supplying milk used for cheese by Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, and Domino’s. An investigator for Mercy for Animals has revealed that the cows in this dairy operation never go outside, have the ends of their tails cut off in painful procedures without anesthesia, and are abused by workers.

CBS and other media outlets reported about extreme abuse and killing of newborn calves and cows at Daisy Farms. An undercover investigator with Mercy For Animals documented horrific animal cruelty at the largest dairy producer in Canada.

Those are just a few examples, and there are more in the US and other countries. But even without the purposeful cruelty, the daily life of cows is abusive. They are milked day after day, year after year; annually being taken back to the “rape rack”, and after giving birth, they’ll be milked while mourning the loss of their babies again. Cows can live to 20 years, however, those raised for dairy are sent to slaughter around the young age of four and their exhausted bodies are processed into ground beef for fast food hamburgers or supermarket retail.

Turning cows into milk machines causes production-related diseases, mainly lameness and mastitis (udder infections), which are the two leading causes of dairy cow mortality in the US.^[4] Lameness is caused by foot infections or leg problems, which stem from improper nutrition and exacerbated by standing in feces or water soaked areas.^[5]

Those who consume dairy cause needless misery to wonderful and intelligent animals, being willfully ignorant, with the sole purpose of pleasing the taste buds. The sad truth is that there is no biological need for adults nor children to consume animal’s milk. Adults and children can get all the nutrients they need, such as, protein, calcium and potassium, from grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, and fortified plant-based foods. These foods are not only nutritious and healthy, but they don’t contain the hormones, antibiotics and pus found in animal’s milk. Moreover, recent studies have shown that milk is bad for you, and yet its consumption is promoted by the industry and the government. Cow’s milk can promote weight gain, cancer, and cause osteoporosis.

And let’s not forget the extreme harm that all dairy farms cause to the environment. Beyond its vast greenhouse gas emissions, wasteful water use and water pollution, the dairy sector contributes to air pollution, zoonotic pathogens, antimicrobial resistance, biodiversity loss and soil degradation.^[6]

The market is flooded with a huge variety of many delicious and healthy nut and grain-based products. Explore them at your local grocery store and check out my favorites here. And for those who rely on their taste buds to tell them what’s good for them, remember, most of us were programmed to consume dairy products since infancy. Once you ditch dairy and try plant-based cheeses, milks and ice creams, you will get accustomed to the new flavors quickly. Most importantly, know that dairy isn’t only unhealthy but that you’re making an ethical choice. You’re saving the lives of sentient beings who’re as wonderful as your dog and cat. When I see cheese, a glass of milk, or a cookie made with dairy butter, I’m disgusted as I envision all the endless suffering and death those products caused.

Sentient beings are NOT ours to exploit and use. Their bodies are theirs, their babies belong to them and their life matters to them. Even if cows or goats were raised with love as companion animals, I would not drink their milk, just as I wouldn’t drink my dog’s milk if she had any. Mothers’ milk is intended to nourish her babies, period. It’s not mine and I would not steal it just because I can.

I feel regret and deep sorrow for all the misery I caused those beautiful animals for so many years by consuming their milk. I beg all of you who were not aware of the facts, now that you know, please stop this inhumane treatment of mothers and their babies. I implore you, don’t buy dairy products that are based on sexual violations, destruction of motherhood, abuse, killing of baby animals, along with polluting the planet. Ditch dairy today and choose plant-based swaps for a compassionate and sustainable world!

To learn more about the dairy industry you can read the following:

Business Insider–They finally figured out what to do with old dairy cows

Forbes–Milk Of Human Kindness Denied To Dairy Cows

Free from Harm–10 Dairy Facts the Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

Wikipedia–Dairy cattle

^[1] How To Artificially Inseminate Cows and Heifers. Retrieved 8/30/2016

^[2] David S. Turk, Detailed Discussion of Cattle Laws, Michigan State University College of Law, 2007. Retrieved 8/30/2016

^[3] Richard L. Wallace, Market Cows: A Potential Profit Center, University of Illinois Extension, 3/13/2002. Retrieved 8/30/2016

^[4] How Big A Problem Is Dairy Cow Mortality In The US?, The Cattle Site, 2011. Retrieved 8/30/2016

^[5] Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Dairy cattle“. Retrieved 8/30/2016

^[6] Pope, D. H., Karlsson, J. O., Baker, P., & McCoy, D. (2021). Examining the Environmental Impacts of the Dairy and Baby Food Industries: Are First-Food Systems a Crucial Missing Part of the Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems Agenda Now Underway?. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(23), 12678. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182312678. Retrieved 5/12/2023