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I founded Happy Cow Milk to make a difference in dairying. I failed
- wes-k 9y agoThe problem is there is no way to have humane milk. It will always require impregnating cows and taking the calf’s milk.
- Scarblac 9y agoMaybe hormones?
- rhn_mk1 9y agoThis is still a step in the direction of being more humane, and should not be underestimated.
- wes-k 9y agoAgreed. I neglected to add that this means they are really going after a small and ephemeral niche: those who want to spend more for more humane milk but still drink cows milk. Many people in that position may find themselves adopting a plant based diet.
- s17n 9y agoConsumer behavior can change. With good marketing, it seems plausible that humane meat and dairy could become a big market, way bigger than veganism.
- firethief 9y agoThat's something we need to be aware of and do everything we can to prevent. Humane animal products are even more unsustainable than stomach-turningly efficient animal products. The world population continues to shift toward a meat-filled American diet, and it would be catastrophic to meet the whole world's demand with old-fashioned farms where animals have outdoor space to roam and aren't loaded up with steroids and antibiotics, let alone the ecological costs of keeping the useless males alive.
- s17n 9y agoThat is a problem that classical economics trivially solves - humane meat is already unaffordable for most people.
- gnud 9y agoShouldn't it be possible to give the calf all the milk until it's old enough to wean, but keep milking the mother. I think that's what they used to do in the days of sustenance farming. Of course, if the calf was a boy they would slaughter it about then. But that's another discussion entirely.
- bayesian_horse 9y agoThe farmer in the article does it that way. Cows produce the most milk right after birth. Then they reduce the production, because the calve starts eating on its own. I think keeping the calves with the mothers is the smallest part of the problem. The premature slaughter of cows and the slaughter of male calves and "surplus" female calves is the bigger issue for me.
- phkahler 9y agoApparently the cows now produce way more milk per day than the calf needs. The wikipedia also says calves grow a lot faster when kept with their mother.
- anoncoward111 9y agoThere are some frontiers where vegan replacements aren't particularly tasty to me (vegan cheese for example, at least in its cold form). But as for almond milk and soy milk and coconut milk, their taste, to me, is clearly superior to cow's milk.
- wes-k 9y agoVegan cheese may never have the variety and taste, but that’s something I decided I can accept. That said, there have been improvements and more awesome brands appearing every year! Check out miyoko’s cheeses and butter! https://miyokoskitchen.com https://miyokoskitchen.com
- cwilkes 9y agoI’ll second Miyoko. My wife’s vegan and I mostly can’t stand vegan cheese but that one is pretty good as a spread on crackers.
- anoncoward111 9y agoAwesome :) I think I've tried "Go Veggie!" and "Daiya" brands from the super market. If you melt the Go Veggie brand into vegetable chili and then put that on top of some baked pita chips, you are in for an enjoyable meal ^.^
- castle-bravo 9y agoJust FYI, Go Veggie isn't vegan or dairy free (at least last time I checked), it's lactose free. Also, Daiya isn't the state of the art by a long shot. If you're adventurous and have a large grocery budget, Chao (served cold) is the most cheese-like cheeze that I've had so far.
- subpixel 9y agoI use soy milk for cereal, but no non-dairy milk works for me in tea, yet.
- 9y ago
- matte_black 9y agoHow do milk producing organs work? Could they work outside a body?
- wes-k 9y agoWith the adavances of lab grown meat, I’d bet they could. Makes ya think though doesn’t it? There could be a time when humans are drinking lab produced cows milk from an artificial organ. And people call us vegans extreme ;)
- sleavey 9y agoI really long for the day where we can grow in the lab the stuff we currently harm animals for, but a big "if" will be whether we can replicate the nutritional profile. A lot of vegan-friendly food I find is bulked up with carbohydrates and/or soy protein.
- firethief 9y agoConcerned about carbs and protein... keto?
- pm90 9y agoThat's a very valid concern. For our space faring successors though, this would perhaps be the most important breakthrough. Going off on a tangent here but If you could replicate earth-obtained food in space, it would probably make me much more amenable to the idea of shooting out into the void and living my whole life there.
- bayesian_horse 9y agoNutritionally, "vegan" milk is almost as good or even better than cow's milk in some regards. The more important issue is taste and certain chemical/technological properties, which we need in other dairy products
- jmgrosen 9y agoLook at this startup! http://www.perfectdayfoods.com/ http://www.perfectdayfoods.com/
- jmgrosen 9y agoDisagree. This startup is using genetically engineered yeast to produce milk proteins which can be used to form things that are exactly like milk: http://www.perfectdayfoods.com/ http://www.perfectdayfoods.com/ They're launching soon.
- wes-k 9y agoThis is awesome! More alternatives the better!
- btcindivist 9y agoThe thing is, people don't really care about animals. Especially not the kind, calm and docile ones. A holocaust is happening currently, 60 billion most docile and mostly female cows and fowls are eliminated every year. No one gives a damn. Heck, even I don't. I drink my milk and eat my chicken. I consider those things mine and don't care if the milk is a product of forced selection that created a monster of a species, or that chicken is a flesh of an innocent animal. I do not even care about what it does to the environment. I'm voting with my money to have this practice continue. The whole system is built for meat and milk to work. Yeah, it's some wierd suboptimal local minimum but that's what it is. I live in a meat culture and don't care if I can survive eating only plants.
- Judgmentality 9y ago> A holocaust is happening currently, 60 billion most docile and mostly female cows and fowls are eliminated every year. I think you mean million, not billion. And even then that number is high for estimates. edit: I missed the part about fowl (I am dumb)
- pjc50 9y agoChickens? That's only 10 year/person.
- Judgmentality 9y agoMy mistake, I missed the part about chickens. I'll edit my comment.
- btcindivist 9y agoAbout a billion cows or so annually.
- jacobush 9y ago60 million birds? That must be consumed on Super Bowl alone.
- pera 9y agoThis part left me thinking: > So you’d ask, what about reusable milk cans or kegs to supply cafes? Again. No. Every time I go to a coffeehouse I see that, even in the biggest chains, baristas serve milks (animal/plant based) from normal bottles. I have always wondered why is that: aside of how wasteful it is, isn't it also more expensive?
- trevyn 9y agoThe word “wasteful” is only meaningful in the context of a valuable resource that is being consumed. Automated manufacturing of disposable containers uses very little valuable resources, as is reflected in their monetary cost. The logistics of reusing more durable containers consumes substantial valuable human resources, resulting in the use of the solution that is consuming the least, on a value basis. Human time is not free, and manufactured goods are far less expensive than people imagine, because they are not produced by human labor. The cost to mechanically produce a disposable package is not the same as it intuitively would cost you personally to make a package.
- firethief 9y agoMost of the waste resulting from disposable packages isn't the investment to create them, it's the waste that's left over and has to be disposed of.
- chongli 9y agoWhat about the investment in fuel, energy, water, and detergents: to collect the reusable containers, bring them to a sorting facility, sort them, bring them to the manufacturer, and wash them before they can be refilled? Disposable containers are much lighter and cheaper since they don't need to be so durable for repeated washing and filling. The additional fuel costs of shipping heavier reusable containers around must be pretty substantial in itself, let alone all of the other steps.
- pera 9y ago
- miles 9y agoTwo related quotes[0]: The human body has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk. The very saddest sound in all my memory was burned into my awareness at age five on my uncle's dairy farm in Wisconsin. A cow had given birth to a beautiful male calf. The mother was allowed to nurse her calf but for a single night. On the second day after birth, my uncle took the calf from the mother and placed him in the veal pen in the barn—only ten yards away, in plain view of the mother. The mother cow could see her infant, smell him, hear him, but could not touch him, comfort him, or nurse him. The heartrending bellows that she poured forth—minute after minute, hour after hour, for five long days—were excruciating to listen to. They are the most poignant and painful auditory memories I carry in my brain. Since that age, whenever I hear anyone postulate that animals cannot really feel emotions, I need only to replay that torturous sound in my memory of that mother cow crying her bovine heart out to her infant. Mother's love knows no species barriers... [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Klaper https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Klaper
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- amriksohata 9y agoFarmers in the UK inject cows with estrogen and antibiotics to make them grow faster and bigger. We are messing with nature and making them and ourselves sick. Cows need milking, they feel pain with full udders, but not at the mass production level where they are also subjected to being killed for meat.
- open-source-ux 9y agoFarmers in the UK inject cows with estrogen and antibiotics to make them grow faster and bigger. This is not true. EU rules ban the use of growth hormones and antibiotics as a growth agent in livestock. Antibiotics are still (overused) for disease prevention but there is a realisation that this needs to change (whether it will is a different matter). I can't find more recent data, but here are figures from 2011 on antibiotic use in livestock in countries around the world, including New Zealand, the US and the EU. https://amr-review.org/sites/default/files/Info%204%20bar%20chart%20white.jpg https://amr-review.org/sites/default/files/Info%204%20bar%20... Also, some British supermarkets are now publishing farm antibiotics data from their supply chains: http://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/waitrose-asda-ms-publish-farm-antibiotics-data.htm http://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/waitrose-asda-ms-publish-farm...
- newscracker 9y ago> Cows need milking, they feel pain with full udders Firstly, they have been cross bred to produce a lot more milk than their ancestors even a century ago did. Secondly, female mammals of different species go through different phases in milk production vs. what's consumed by the baby. If you don't milk a dog or cat to relieve pain from having more milk, why would you want to do it for just one species? This whole thing is a human created problem that's turned into mor excuses to continue such practices.
- amester 9y agoLots of information on antibiotic use on farms in UK at www.farmantibiotics.org especially in the news section where there is an update on progress in the UK and by farm. Shows a 27% drop in 2 years and also that UK is among the lowest user of farm antibiotics in Europe. Growth promotion of any kind has been banned in the EU for 10 years, and that includes antibiotics or hormones. Please check your facts - there are a lot of differences between farming in the UK and other countries.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoI think it was Seymour Cray that said to push the boundary in one dimension at a time. However, in this person was trying to do two new things at the same time: reusable glass bottles and humane cow treatment. Both of those caused friction with the existing infrastructure. I think that if he had just tried to have humane cow treatment and just used the disposable bottles that everyone was using, he would have had a better chance to succeed.
- karmakaze 9y ago> At this point you might just decide that there’s no way around this and put your milk in plastic bottles. This is what most smart people would do. But I know that most of the plastic milk bottles in New Zealand are not actually recycled. And so I built my own milk factory. This where I stopped reading. Don't let lesser issues get in the way of solving a major one.
- craftyguy 9y agoThat is a pretty major issue itself.
- chias 9y agoFor those who didn't actually get to the end of the article, he hasn't given up yet -- he made the decision to, and then the overwhelming support he received changed his mind. He's still "fighting the good fight" for the sake of kinder treatment of cows and letting them stay with their calves. More info (and you can also support him) here: https://www.happycowmilk.co.nz/ https://www.happycowmilk.co.nz/
- _nalply 9y agoExactly. After I read the last sentence, I thought an apt title would be: I failed... NOT (yet)
- igravious 9y agoLast four lines of the article “And then my fatal flaw emerged. The one that got me past all those early ‘no’s and sustained me through four years of hard graft – my relentless optimism. So 24 hours later, I was back on Facebook, sketching out ideas on how Happy Cow V.2 might work. Change is hard. You have to climb over a lot of ‘no’s to get there. But this story might not be quite over. If you would like to help our cause please consider signing up for updates at happycowmilk.co.nz“
- jimmaswell 9y agoWhy not just compromise on the plastic jugs? I don't understand why he was so hung up on the plastic jugs. The humane milking part seems much more important, and more people would probably buy it in that form. Why would customers who didn't recycle the plastic bottles be more inclined to recycle the glass jugs? Just to get a tiny deposit back?
- chrissnell 9y agoHere in small-town Kansas, we buy our milk at the supermarket. You can choose from the store brand in plastic or a local dairy, Hildebrand Farms, in glass jars. If you go with the local stuff, you pay a $3 deposit on the bottle. It's a strong incentive to return them. We wait until we have four or five jars and return them in a batch. The milk is fantastic and I've toured their dairy so I know what I'm getting and where it came from. http://hildebrandfarmsdairy.com http://hildebrandfarmsdairy.com
- atomical 9y agoThat implies that if you don't know that it's dangerous. That may not be the case because milk naturally contains hormones that can effect the endocrine system. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524299/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524299/ > In summary, it seems that steroid hormones are very potent compounds in dairy foods, which exerting profound biological effects in animals and humans. Most of the previous knowledge about the steroids is according on their physiologic and sometimes supra-physiologic concentrations of steroids but recently it is found that these compounds even at very low doses may have significant biological effects.
- sudosteph 9y agoI wonder if he could patent that portable milking station thing and just license it to other milk producers. I definitely would be more likely to buy milk that didn't require the slaughter of calves. Not aware of any options for that in the US though.
- subpixel 9y agoMale dairy calves are always slaughtered, b/c (with rare cross-breed exceptions on tiny farms) they are the wrong breed for meat and nobody wants to buy and raise them as pets.
- apahwa 9y agoif your customers are willing to pay a premium for your product just because you are doing things in a more humane way then they are probably also the type to actually recycle their cartons.
- BLanen 9y agoHonestly, going for carton seems like it would have made his whole thing a lot easier and it's not that bad. Also easier to brand I think since the whole thing can be printed on.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoAh a full stack failure. That is when you decide to change (or implement) everything in the full stack from raw material to consumer in one go. As a "go to market" strategy it is usually fatal. In the technology business it is a company that makes their own CPU, their own operating system, and then opens their own retail stores for selling their computers with their own software. Plastic Logic failed this way when instead of just marketing their screens they tried to build an entire reader (screen/case/os/etc). Based on the telling of the tale, a different strategy might have been to a milk packer that used re-usable glass bottles. Buy milk from Fronterra, then package it in re-usable packaging, and work with the grocery stores to stock it and handle the returns. Work that cycle developing tools and processes that get the use of reusable containers to the same level of efficiency as the plastic containers. That is like a 5 year project right there. Surveys of stores on their return process, helping them improve it, maybe building receiving kiosks that handle it without the store having to train employees to do the return. Just doing that and you have helped the dairy business be more sustainable. Once that is running, then start looking at remote milking the cows. Your bottling company now has two brands, "earth friendly" milk in sustainable bottles, and "earth and cow friendly" milk in sustainable bottles from happy cows.
- tomohawk 9y agoMany problem solvers fail to take into account that a solution does not all have to be done in one swoop, but that it can be made much less risky and more likely to succeed by proceeding in stages. Only Superman jumps buildings in a single bound. The rest of us have to use the stairs.
- LifeLiverTransp 9y agoI propably shouldnt say this- but i always loved farmers and there fast, and practical solutions to problems. Have yet to see a farmer meeting where a bunch of yesman and naysayers boil great ideas down to the smallest comon demnominator. The fact that he even got this far- doing it all by himself, where others would have run out of money just making plans for a bottling plant- that alone is quite impressive. The valley can learn a thing or two from those proto-typing maniacs out there, who dont spend half a year on there knees to get the procurement management to sign of on some vital investment just so that some hierarchy and kings-court do feel important.
- HIPisTheAnswer 9y agoHe went way too big. This is a business plan that needs to start very locally. Trying to hit retailer shelves with this is counter to the premise of sustainability; if a combustion engine is used for shipping the milk, and if refrigeration is used, there is no sustainability left. We ferment milk, using what's called 'kefir' bacteria's - the health benefits compared to raw milk are hard to believe, and the milk can sit at room temperature for over a year without any problems. We make cheese with it and it ages very well. Raw milk isn't sustainable.
- FooHentai 9y ago>He went way too big. This is a business plan that needs to start very locally. Trying to hit retailer shelves with this is counter to the premise of sustainability. That sounds reasonable but the scale and population of NZ prevents this. Many 'Cities' here, excluding the biggest few, would be considered small towns in most other countries. Regardless of the small scale, corner stores are owned by one of two big groups. The non-retailers you're imagining him leveraging don't really exist here on any scale that would work. The population, outside of these few cities is so sparse that there's no small-scale retain presence. So if you attempt to start local you're selling to a market of a few hundred, at best. Of that market you would need significant uptake to make any headway.
- newscracker 9y ago> We ferment milk, using what's called 'kefir' bacteria's - the health benefits compared to raw milk are hard to believe, and the milk can sit at room temperature for over a year without any problems. Once you ferment it, isn't it yogurt, and no longer milk? Do you use it for beverages like coffee, tea, shakes, etc.? If you leave it out for a year (or even a few weeks), doesn't it get completely fermented and become sour? Doesn't it get fungus after a few weeks? Or do you turn it into cheese soon after fermenting (which has a much longer life)?
- scottie_m 9y agoI’m not an expert, and a year sounds like a long time, but here’s some information to answer a few of your questions. Is it yogurt? Sort of. Sour cream is also fermented milk products, but we don’t call it yogurt. That’s maybe a bit arbitrary, but there it is. In the case of kefir, I’d argue that the distinction is valid. Yogurt is just inoculated with various strains of bacteria, which eat milk sugars and produce lactic acid. That lactic acid is delicious, and it also tends to kill any invading microbes that might make us sick, like fungi. Kefir is similar, but is inoculated with “grains” of a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. Kefir is like... milk kombucha. Sort of. (Real) Kefir is actually carbonated and very slightly alcoholic, because the yeast is doing part of the sugar-eating, producing CO2 and ethanol as a result. In that sense it’s kind of like milk beer, or milk-yogurt-beer, you get the idea. Cheese is a whole different beast! When you make cheese you use an enzyme, rennet, to separate curds from whey in fresh milk. What you next depends on the cheese, and doesn’t have to even involve aging or fermentation. Of course, some cheese is allowed to react with fungi (Brie), or swabbed with bacterial cultures(Muenster), or exposed to wild strains of both. Incidentally you can also ferment butter, which develops a somewhat cheesy flavor due to lactic acid fermentation, but because it’s not treated with rennet and is almost pure fat is Not cheese. Finally, the lactic acid produced in any fermentation process will eventually be concentrated enough to kill everything including the “good” bacteria, just like yeast will eventually kill itself with a high enough concentration of alcohol. So there is a limit to how fermented something can be, and after that you’re just aging it. Of course the traditional way with kefir was to keep adding milk and kefir grains to the existing kefir. The result was sort of perpetual fermentation, almost like a sourdough starter, or kombucha “mother” can be continuously fed and fed upon.
- bayesian_horse 9y agoThe dairy industry is about the worst industry to start anything. I've seen it up close in Germany, where some milk farmers still want to expand or set up new farms, despite lamenting about the poor price of milk. The farmers seem to have some kind of myopia where all they see is milk farming, and damn if the market needs it. And it's going to get worst. Pretty soon we will discover that you don't need a whole cow to make some milk. Substitutes for milk components are already in use everywhere, but it shouldn't be that difficult to produce "authentic" milk proteins and other components using synthetic biology. Before that, maybe we don't need a calve from every cow, improving at least that part of the animal welfare issue. And even a "disruptor" with cow-less milk may fail quickly, as consumers don't like change and milk is so damn cheap anyway.
- tomohawk 9y agoWhy couldn't he just print an MSRP (manufacturers suggested retail price) on his bottles... Make the retailers justify the higher price.
- creep 9y agoThat's weird. In Canada every health food store carries organic milk in glass bottles for about $3/L. Not sure if the calves are taken from their mothers or not, but the farming practices of the particular brand I'm talking about ensure healthy soil. It's not as cheap as plastic jug milk, but the stores give you I think $.50 for returning the bottles.
- pipio21 9y agoI feel sorry for this man. He is a perfectionist. He believes everything has to be perfect or if not he does not do it. Because of that at the end of the day we have nothing. With a company you need to compromise. Probably you can no use glass, but you can use polyethylene and paper (tetrabrick). Step by step you could do a lot. We take lots of technical debt, if we make something that is not a perfect solution but it is better than anything that exist on the world, we ship it. The world improves. Yes, it is not perfect, but if the product success over time you could pay your technical debt and make it perfect. If not , it just means that people's pockets is not where their mouth is(which is common by the way).
- netfire 9y agoWhy not just go with paper milk cartons? They are very recyclable and biodegradeable and I think it would be easy to find a supplier/packager and the stores would have no problem selling it.
- robocat 9y agoAnd here is a successful way to do a similar idea in NZ with unpasteurised milk in reusable containers that has been going for many years on a few farms: http://www.villagemilk.co.nz http://www.villagemilk.co.nz http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/04/raw-milk-vending-machine-an-udder-success-for-canterbury-farmer.html http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/04/raw-milk-v...
- bambax 9y ago> But I wasn’t comfortable with the practice of removing calves from mothers and sending four-day-old calves to be slaughtered. Calves are a by-product of milk. The world doesn't need calves, doesn't want (or like) veal. Calves exist because in order to get milk, we need to get the cows pregnant. Then we kill the calves. There is no other way to get cow milk; there is no way to make "humane" milk. We can either, not use milk, or devise a way to produce synthetic milk. But cow milk == killing calves.
- txsh 9y agoThere’s consumer demand for veal. It’s delicious. Companies just don’t want the headaches caused by the finger-waggers. So many male calves are shot and discarded instead of becoming food. It’s insane.
- betterbeehome 9y ago"So many male calves are shot and discarded instead of becoming food." Now that is disgusting. Good job finger-waggers, you've just caused more waste and inefficiency in the world because of poor ethics.
- mschuster91 9y ago> So many male calves are shot and discarded instead of becoming food. Well, at least now I think I found out where all that cat and dog food comes from. Seriously, 90 million cats and 70 million dogs alone in the US, that's a huuuuuge load of food.
- einarfd 9y agoIt doesn't have to be like that. I grew up on a Norwegian dairy farm. Killing calves is not something that my parents or anyone else in the business did. Female calves get to grow up and become milk cows, for male calves they are kept around until they are full grown and then get slaughtered for meat. There is a lot of places where this isn't the standard procedure, but it is an option.
- mrfusion 9y agoI find the biggest problem with gallon milk containers is that they’re too heavy for kids to pour themselves. I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe something that can sit in your fridge with a valve a kid could turn. It’s such a simple thing but if your best customers can’t access your product without assistance the industry could actually be losing a lot of money.
- bradknowles 9y agoIMO, the biggest mistake he made was not keeping in touch with the final consumers of the product, as he was building the rest of the process. If he’d done regular posts on social media about what he was trying to do, he could have gotten good feedback and contacts with like-minded people much earlier. And then he wouldn’t have had to shoulder that burden himself all by his lonesome.