Dairy – a dark story

Charlotte, a pregnant cow, who could hardly walk, was rescued from a dairy farm by Uncle Neil’s Home sanctuary, which offered her a loving home. She gave birth to Valentino, after overcoming a severe foot infection—a common affliction among dairy cows. Despite the fact that all of Charlotte’s previous babies were taken from her, a standard and cruel practice, she was a wonderful mother to Valentino. Her story highlights the harsh realities of animals in dairy farms. The dairy industry is colossal, and is often unscrutinized, despite its massive adverse effects on the environment, human health, and exploitation and abuse of animals.

From a young age society tells us that dairy is natural and healthy, and that cows are milked so they won’t be in pain. Yet those falsehoods mask the industry’s true nature. All dairy farms, regardless of their labels—‘small’, ‘local’, ‘organic’, ‘free-range’ or ‘grass-fed’—subject cows to  inhumane practices to produce a steady stream of milk, and provide the meat sector with calf and cow flesh.

Cows are bright and sensitive animals, who have a wide range of emotions. They can feel pain, both psychological and physical, much like your dog and cat. However, the dairy industry harbors deep-seated cruelty towards the animals, and treats them as mere production units, without any respect or concern for their suffering, all in the name of profit.

In all dairy operations, cows undergo forced impregnation, in a process considered rape if imposed on humans. It’s the only way cows get pregnant, when a cow is about one year old, and then annually, in order to induce and maintain lactation. The cow is strapped to a ‘rape rack’, then a person inserts their arm into the cow’s rectum to position the uterus, and forces the insemination gun with semen into her vagina, and injects it into her uterus. Bulls suffer a similar violation during semen collection. They’re coaxed to ejaculate into an artificial vagina, or forced via electroejaculation—shoving a probe into a bull’s rectum and shocking his pelvic nerves.

The extreme cruelty and infliction of pain doesn’t end there. Separation of calves is another barbaric practice required to produce milk. Newborns are typically snatched from their mothers within a few hours of being born—still fresh from their mothers’ wombs. In nature, a mom cow would nurse her baby for nine to twelve months, and bond with her, similar to other mammalian mothers. In dairy farms however, this bond is broken. Much like humans, both mother cows and calves possess intelligence and emotional sensitivity, and suffer as a result of this cruel separation. The mother mourns the loss by crying for days, pacing, and may stop eating. That heartbreaking suffering happens every year of their short life in dairy farms.

A young emaciated female calf at a small family-run dairy farm in Vermont, Photo Curtsey: Victoria de Martigny / We Animals Media

Male calves, deemed economically insignificant, are either sold to veal and meat farms or killed. In the UK more than 90,000 male dairy calves are shot annually, and in Australia, hundreds of thousands are killed. Those sold for veal are confined or chained in stalls, and stand in their excrement. Their life typically lasts between eighteen to twenty weeks. Female calves are confined to individual pens, motherless, until they replace their mothers who are slaughtered young. 

Photo Curtsey: Andrew Skowron / We Animals Media

After her baby is taken away from her, the mother is put to work. In most dairy operations, cows are being milked on hard floors, hooked to milking machines. They stand in their own waste which leads to severe foot infections. Additionally, farmers subject them to routine painful procedures such as tattooing, ear tagging, and tail cutting. Horrifically, farmers destroy eight weeks old calves’ horn buds with hot iron. All mutilations are often performed without anesthesia.

As with any business that exploits animals for profit, purposeful animal cruelty is rampant on all dairy farms. I’m sharing only one instance as described by the New York Times: “a short video filmed undercover on a small, family-owned farm in Southern California that revealed workers casually kicking and beating cows with metal rods, and a newborn male calf, its face covered with flies, left to die in the mud. One segment showed an earth-moving bucket hoisting an injured Holstein into the air by its hindquarters.” According to Animal Outlook, which documented that and other egregious abuse cases, those are the rule in animal agriculture, not the exception.

The unnatural demands imposed on dairy cows to continuously produce large quantities of milk, result in many severe health problems. These include mastitis (a painful udder infection which results in pus in the milk), lameness, and metabolic disorders. While in nature, cows can live over 20 years, dairy cows are slaughtered between 4.5 to 6 years old due to declining milk production and illnesses. Their exhausted bodies are processed into ground beef for fast food.

What about our health? Studies link dairy consumption with prostate and ovarian cancer, possibly due to hormones and growth factors present in milk. Lactose intolerance inflicts approximately 65% of the global population who are unable to digest lactose, with higher rates among certain ethnic groups. In the US, 80% of all African-Americans and Native Americans and over 90 percent of Asian-Americans are lactose intolerant. Dairy is also a common allergen, especially among children, with symptoms ranging from hives, itching, wheezing, vomiting, and digestive problems to severe anaphylaxis. Recently, the FDA found that US cow’s milk in grocery stores is testing positive for avian flu, shockingly, 20 percent of it.

Sadly, even though studies have shown that milk isn’t good for you, its consumption is promoted by the industry and the government. When profits are at stake, facts fall by the wayside.

The dairy sector harms us all by causing enormous damage to the environment. It’s responsible for vast greenhouse gas emissions (especially methane an extremely potent one), water and air pollution and wasteful water use. It also contributes to antimicrobial resistance, biodiversity loss and soil degradation. Comparing to plant-based alternatives, cow’s milk causes around three times as much greenhouse gas emissions, uses around ten times as much land, two to twenty times as much freshwater, and creates much higher levels of eutrophication.

There’s no biological necessity for humans to consume animal milk. Adults and children can get the same nutrients directly from plants-based sources. Not only those are more nutritious and healthy, but they don’t contain harmful components such as cholesterol, hormones, antibiotics and pus, found in animal milk.

The market for plant-based dairy is growing, offering a wide range of delicious and nutritious options, and a product such as Ripple is even more nutritious than dairy milk. Not surprisingly, as the demand for dairy declines, more companies and farmers are transitioning to plant-based. Explore them at your local grocery store, and check out my favorites here.

Those who rely on their taste buds to tell them what’s good, know that flavor alone should not be the primary determining factor informing what you consume. Most of us were indoctrinated to consume dairy throughout our life, so expect the plant-based products to taste a little different, but be just as satisfying. Once you ditch dairy and try plant-based cheeses, milks, butter and ice creams, trust me, you’ll get accustomed to the new flavors quickly and never look back.

Marley, a rescued calf, at Luvin Arms animal sanctuary

By being aware of the immense harms dairy causes, we can make conscious choices—going dairy-free—and help create a more sustainable and compassionate world for all its inhabitants. I believe that every action counts, and together, we can foster a future where animals are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Thank you for joining me on this journey towards a more humane world. Until next time, stay compassionate and informed.

To see the uplifting story of Charlotte and Valentino check out this video.