The Dark Side of Dairy

Milk - The Wrong Stuff

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 much and even fewer know about.

Drinking milk is cruel - it’s also unnatural. Only humans drink it after weaning – and milk from a different species, at that. It’s no more natural than drinking badger’s milk or cat’s milk. Designed for calves, many humans find milk hard to digest and the result is allergies. Hormones in milk are linked to ovarian, breast and prostate cancer, as well as juvenile-onset diabetes. The saturated fat, cholesterol and animal protein it contains are linked to many other diseases.

The modern dairy cow is bred to produce over 10 times more milk than her calf would drink – an enormous physical burden which takes its toll on her body
Click here for a video clip of malnourished cows

Despite relentless claims by the dairy industry, milk is neither the only nor the best source of calcium and has little effect on bone strength. Broccoli, spinach (cabbage), watercress, nuts, seeds, soya and other plant foods are better and healthier sources.

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 milk - up to 120 pints a day. 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.  Professor John Webster describes the removal of the calf as the ‘most potentially distressing incident in the life of the dairy cow’.

“The dairy cow is exposed to more abnormal physiological demands than any other farm animal. She is the supreme example of an overworked mother.”

Professor John Webster, Bristol University’s Veterinary Science Department

The separation of dairy cows and their newborn calves is traumatic for both. Desperate cows can bellow for days in the hope of being reunited with their infant

Separation

Cows produce milk for a reason. They are female mammals who need to feed their young – just like us. And the process which 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. The magical process of reproduction has been perverted – cows are no longer seen as mothers producing food for their babies but milk machines.

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 – excruciating mastitis (udder infection), lameness, infertility and low milk yield. A quarter of all UK cows, mostly under five years old, are killed every year - physically exhausted.

Not a banned veal crate but a legal calf stall. After separation from their from their mothers, calves are imprisoned for up to eight weeks - no maternal affection, exercise or the comfort of other calves
Click here for a video clip of newborn calves in hutches

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 their lives 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.

A combination of stored milk, blood and tissue can result in an udder weighing up to 75kg. The strain on a cow’s legs is enormous and can lead to agonizing sole ulcers
Click here for a video clip of lame cows

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 as long as they produce milk, they are still profitable.

Pure male dairy calves are useless to dairy farmers. Many are transported long distances to Continental veal farms at only two weeks old, while others are simply shot at birth.

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 and many are exported to Continental veal farms, suffering terrifing journeys and slaughtered at only a few months old. Others are simply shot in the head shortly after birth, worthless by-products of milk production.

Dirty, crowded cubicles can be home for half the year. Hard flooring produces leg problems and bacteria from slurry spread, causing mastitis
Click here for a video clip of a typical cubicle unit

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.

Antibiotics to treat mastitis are painfully injected up the teat canal. Many farmers inject their entire herd, whether infected or not

Contamination

Mastitis is excruciatingly 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 four hundred million pus cells per litre can legally be sold for humans.