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"Made for humans" also draws attention to the fact that the milk you're drinking from a cow is not being drank by the offspring of that cow like it normally wou

"Made for humans" also draws attention to the fact that the milk you're drinking from a cow is not being drank by the offspring of that cow like it normally would and many people don't realise you have to keep making diary cows give birth to get more milk. Newly born male cows are usually turned into veal in a few weeks and female cows are separated from their mothers so they don't drink the valuable milk. Milk giving cows are then slaughtered for meat when they stop yielding enough milk after several births. This reality isn't obvious from milk ads. I'll admit I only learned the above in the last few years because nobody talks about it and when you try people will instinctively defend these uncomfortable facts.

mcculley 6y ago
I hosted a meetup on “dairy tech”. Before the presentation, I think I had an implicit assumption that cattle raised for beef were treated poorly. I came away realizing that cattle used for milk production suffer more. In the most efficient dairies, they never leave their enclosure, are kept pregnant continuously via artificial insemination, and are injected with hormones.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  > I came away realizing that cattle used for milk production suffer more. I think you could certainly argue that. Beef cows are slaughtered at around 3 years and diary cows are slaughtered at around 5 years but after giving birth with their offspring taken away several times (both have about a 20 year life span). Personally, I don't understand how vegetarians justify it as being much different in terms of animal cruelty. You're still paying into a system that's killing animals for your benefit.
  - williamdclt 6y ago
    > You're still paying into a system that's killing animals for your benefit Still a net improvement over buying milk and meat isn't it? Also, people are vegetarian for all sorts of reasons. For some it's about eating meat, for some it's about animal cruelty, for some it's about environmental impact, and probably there's plenty of other reasons
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dunefox 6y ago
      I think no milk but meat would be better.
  - toohotatopic 6y ago
    Because they like milk. You can justify anything if you want it to be true. Where does this end? Industrial farming kills insects. We obviously don't have the same amount of love for insects as we have for cows. But why should cows live and insects die? This comes back to killing humans, one way or the other. How many insects are a foetus? Are poor people not allowed to have children so that insects can keep on living?
    - seanwilson 6y ago
      > Where does this end? Industrial farming kills insects. We obviously don't have the same amount of love for insects as we have for cows. But why should cows live and insects die? Instead of doing nothing because there aren't any perfect solutions, start by aiming to minimise harm when there's realistic options to do so? e.g. avoid cow milk in favour of oat or soy milk. Dairy cows eat crops from industrial farming as well so if you're concerned about insects dying, less diary will likely help e.g. you could make milk directly from soy beans instead of feeding them to cows.
    - roebk 6y ago
      I think most people acknowledge that just by existing they’re causing harm. If you cut meat and diary out of your diet, you’re vastly reducing that harm. This isn’t just taking into consideration the cows, it’s also the vast quantities of crops that are grown to feed livestock. The largest study done on farm use was done by Oxford University a couple of years back and they found that “80 percent of the planet’s total farmland is used to rear livestock.” It continues with “freeing up land mass the size of Australia, China, the EU, and the U.S. – combined. This would lead to immensely fewer greenhouse gas emissions. It would also lessen the amount of wild land lost to agriculture, which is one of the leading causes of mass wildlife species extinction.” So for me, it ends at the meat and diary have a huge negative impact on the environment and I’ll do my best to reduce my share by avoiding meat and diary.
  - lordgroff 6y ago
    I think it's quite simple: many vegetarians have no idea of the conditions in an average dairy farm. I was vegetarian for a number of years before I went vegan. I had assumed dairy cows had it reasonably good and it was quite a shock to find out how horrible their treatment teens to be.
  - Retric 6y ago
    You get around 500 pounds of meat from a full grown cow. So, based on average US consumption that’s ~1 cow per 9 years per person. A single dairy cow produces ~100,000 lbs of milk over their lifespan. At average US consumption that’s ~1 cow per 200 years per person. US waste and exports make it hard to sanity check these numbers, but in 2018 there where 31.4 Million beef cows in US vs 9.4 milk cows adjusting for longer lifespan that’s possibly a 5.5:1 ratio.
    - natdempk 6y ago
      Out of curiosity, do you have a source for these numbers? It's interesting to hear that one dairy cow's lifespan effectively covers enough milk for two average human lifespans worth of consumption.
      - Retric 6y ago
        After posting that I kept digging and got slightly different numbers. Annual milk consumption from Wikipedia is just over 600lb per year in the US, where another source listed 500 lb (Might be milk vs milk + dairy products or an approximation?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_cons... For total milk production from Wikipedia “ The United States dairy herd produced 84.2 billion kilograms (185.7 billion pounds) of milk in 2007” https://www.statista.com/statistics/194302/number-of-beef-and-milk-cows-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/194302/number-of-beef-an.... Lists numbers of beef and dairy cows. 185.7 billion lb / 9.4 million cows = ~20,000 lb per year * ~5 year lifespan ~100k lb. https://albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/how-long-does-the-average-dairy-cow-live/ https://albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/how-long-does-the-a... However, I am not sure it’s a clear comparison as this may be excluding calf’s from these counts. Which would drop lifetime production closer to 60,000lb and better line up with other sources. https://extension.sdstate.edu/how-much-meat-can-you-expect-fed-steer https://extension.sdstate.edu/how-much-meat-can-you-expect-f... Suggest a typical cow at 490 lb of beef and this https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/statistics/per-capita-consumption-of-poultry-and-livestock-1965-to-estimated-2012-in-pounds/ https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/st... gives annual beef consumption of 58.1 lb beef per person per year (2019). PS: Of note dairy cows are also consumed for meat, though generally of lower quality. Which further muddles the issue suggesting that reducing milk consumption might simply increase the number of beef cattle ~1:1 to compensate.
  - jhardy54 6y ago
    > Personally, I don't understand how vegetarians justify it as being much different in terms of animal cruelty. You're still paying into a system that's killing animals for your benefit. I've been vegan for years and I wish people wouldn't take this position publicly. I agree with you, but it's more effective to have lots of people consuming fewer animal products than a few people cutting out animal products "100%". (Of course it's never 100%, that'd be impossible unless you left society.) Let's be optimistic about the amount of change that normal people can do instead of chastising allies for not doing enough.
  - harimau777 6y ago
    My understanding is that it's significantly easier to eat a healthy vegetarian diet than a healthy vegan diet. Therefore, it seems to me that vegetarianism is a reasonable compromise.
- api 6y ago
  We should figure out how to grow only the milk production parts.
- BenjiWiebe 6y ago
  I hope you realize that according to your description, there are very few of those "most efficient" dairies. For best milk production, the cows need to be kept happy and healthy. That means letting them have a place to go out of their barn, walk around, lay in the sun, etc. Also pumping them full of hormones is a thing of the past. Source: lived on a dairy farm all my life
hnarn 6y ago
I’m ideologically positive to vegetarianism and veganism but I’m so sick of this argument. Something being “made for humans” is in no way a positive — so is cocaine.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  > Something being “made for humans” is in no way a positive — so is cocaine. It's more of a spin from the phase "milk is for baby cows" though (not sure what the equivalent would be for cocaine). I used to roll my eyes at this as a naturalistic fallacy but point the being made here is: 1) cows do not give milk unless they've been pregnant 2) the newly born calves need to be separated from their mothers so there's more milk sell There's no similar ethical difficult with oats.
  - hnarn 6y ago
    It's a pretty ridiculous simplification of how nature works. Animals being dependent on each-other is found everywhere in nature, and the fact is that cows at this point would stand almost no chance in nature since we have bred them to the point of cuddly teddy bears. So you could argue that cows get protection and we get milk, it's not necessarily exploitation in my mind until you get to the point where you talk about industrial production of meat and dairy, which to be honest is pretty cruel and horrifying in parts.
    - seanwilson 6y ago
      > Animals being dependent on each-other is found everywhere in nature Human ethics clearly shouldn't and aren't based on what other animals do to each other though. > the fact is that cows at this point would stand almost no chance in nature since we have bred them to the point of cuddly teddy bears You could justify anything with this argument: "doing X to Y is bad, but we've specifically bred Y to have X done to them such that Y can't survive in the wild anymore, therefore it's okay to do X". Just stop breeding them. There's related species in the wild that will live on.
      - 6y ago
Spooky23 6y ago
“Made for humans” has nothing to do with human nutrition, it’s about making humans rich selling a low content, high profit product. The ads and PR about the various sugary cloudy white water drinks always de-empathize the sugar delivery, and the marketing always subtly supports the ignorant faux ethical arguments around dairy pushed with religious zeal by certain groups.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  > the marketing always subtly supports the ignorant faux ethical arguments around dairy What faux ethical arguments are those? Oat milk is less resource intensive and reduces animal cruelty - those are compelling ethical arguments to me.
toretore 6y ago
Sorry, but I just have to make this funnysad joke.. Oat milk is made with rapeseed but cow's milk is made with rape seed.
prawn 6y ago
I believe that some dairies use "sexed" semen to minimise the ratio of male calves. Doesn't detract from the separation, etc though.
- istjohn 6y ago
  I didn't believe you, but: > The method works by staining sperm with a DNA-binding fluorescent dye. The bovine Y-chromosome-bearing sperm contain 3.8% less DNA than the X-chromosome-bearing sperm. Because of the dye, the male and female sperm can be electrically charged differently. This allows for their separation by a fluorescence-activated cell sorter (Seidel, 2007). The method is fairly accurate with ~90% of the sperm containing the desired sex (Garner and Seidel, 2003; DeJarnette et al., 2008). Sexed semen will contain a lower concentration of sperm per straw (approximately 2 million) than non-sexed semen (approximately 20 million) because the sorting process is relatively slow. Because of lower doses of sperm per straw, and possibly a negative effect of the sorting process, fertility of sexed sperm is typically lower compared with conventional sperm (Garner and Seidel, 2003; DeJarnette et al., 2008).[1] 1. https://dairy-cattle.extension.org/the-economics-of-sexed-semen-in-dairy-heifers-and-cows/#:~:text=The%20goal%20with%20sexed%20semen,(and%20better)%20heifer%20calves.&text=With%20heifers%20(and%20cows)%2C,typically%20not%20for%20later%20breedings https://dairy-cattle.extension.org/the-economics-of-sexed-se....
  - prawn 6y ago
    I did some work filming dairies late last year and it was mentioned in the interviews. The biggest "industrial" dairy we visited had most of the cows under cover in large, open-sided sheds. The sheds were ventilated and the cows had fresh bedding regularly, and I'm confident this wasn't put on for us given we were a tiny camera crew. I expected it to be completely miserable but the areas the cows lay to ruminate was clean and they all looked very content. The cows in this operation were much, much cleaner than those at traditional, smaller dairies we visited (who got absolutely filthy with each other's waste, lying out in fields to ruminate). I imagine it's like being given food and allowed to sit on the couch watching TV all day, which is what half of us do already. Not sure if they have a solution for the separation and permanent pregnancy issues.
GuB-42 6y ago
That probably should be taught at school. That's the way farms work. Animals are slaughtered so you can eat them. The reason I think it should be taught at school is first because it basic knowledge. Farms employ a significant portion of the population of most countries, and that's what puts food on the table and keeps you alive. That's pretty important. Another reason is that school can teach that with a neutral point of view. Not like extremists who will describe any farm work involving animals as torture, and not like the interested food industry who wants you to forget that yes, animals are slaughtered to feed you. Personally, as a meat eater, I think that realizing that an animal died for your food helps respecting it. By that I mean don't waste it, cook it properly, appreciate the taste, and of course, prefer respectful farming practices as much as you can.
- kiliantics 6y ago
  I learned all of this in school in a country where agriculture was a significant segment of the economy. It was most definitely not taught with a "neutral point of view". Now that I have learned to understand the world with a more informed and nuanced perspective than the one my public education provided me with, I would certainly agree much more with the "extremists" you mention than any meat-eater justifications of how it "keeps you alive" or "respecting" the animals by eating them. And I say this as someone who still consumes meat and other animal products.
- dunefox 6y ago
  It takes quite a lot of doublethink to mention respect and eating animals in the same sentence. And I say this as a meat eater as well (although I heavily reduced consumption of animal products in the last few months).
  - wst_ 6y ago
    The thing is that you have to kill to eat. Doesn't really matter what do you eat - something has to die for you to live. When you realize that, it's much easier to treat not only cows but everything around you with respect. We've got this respect long time ago and we've forgot about it all after agricultural revolution. Kind of sad...
parineum 6y ago
I really don't have a problem with these things. I don't have a problem killing animals for food, even baby cows. I also don't have a problem killing animals that can't be properly cared for (hello PETA). What I _do_ care about is how those animals are treated before they are killed. I am aware of the process for keeping dairy cows productive. I also am uncertain if the separation of calves and cows causes distress. I find it just as likely that assuming so is to anthropomorphize them. However, the reason I don't know the answer to that is because the treatment of farm animals in factory farms is far more concerning to me. The biggest disconnect between vegans and non-vegans seems to be the assertion that animals can't be raised ethically for food. Instead of focusing on areas of commonality between each other, a distaste for the unnecessary suffering of animals, each party focuses on the disagreements and can't get anything done together. Also, as an aside, the process you describe makes the cow's milk "made for humans" as much as anything is. Humans manipulate the cow's biology to produce milk for humans.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  > I also am uncertain if the separation of calves and cows causes distress. There's plenty of YouTube videos of how cows react to this. Most animals instinctively protect their offspring, and cows are social animals on top of this.
Chinjut 6y ago
How do dairy farmers do it in India (where milk is a huge thing, while beef, while also actually a large industry, is much more controversial)?
BenjiWiebe 6y ago
A cow does lactate for around 10 months before it would need to have a calf again. Also, a cow produces faaar more milk then one calf needs. Source: live on a dairy, grew up feeding calves. Used milk replacer for a while but then switched to plain milk cause it's healthier for the calves (no surprise)

mcculley 6y ago

I hosted a meetup on “dairy tech”. Before the presentation, I think I had an implicit assumption that cattle raised for beef were treated poorly. I came away realizing that cattle used for milk production suffer more. In the most efficient dairies, they never leave their enclosure, are kept pregnant continuously via artificial insemination, and are injected with hormones.

seanwilson 6y ago
> I came away realizing that cattle used for milk production suffer more. I think you could certainly argue that. Beef cows are slaughtered at around 3 years and diary cows are slaughtered at around 5 years but after giving birth with their offspring taken away several times (both have about a 20 year life span). Personally, I don't understand how vegetarians justify it as being much different in terms of animal cruelty. You're still paying into a system that's killing animals for your benefit.
- williamdclt 6y ago
  > You're still paying into a system that's killing animals for your benefit Still a net improvement over buying milk and meat isn't it? Also, people are vegetarian for all sorts of reasons. For some it's about eating meat, for some it's about animal cruelty, for some it's about environmental impact, and probably there's plenty of other reasons
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dunefox 6y ago
    I think no milk but meat would be better.
- toohotatopic 6y ago
  Because they like milk. You can justify anything if you want it to be true. Where does this end? Industrial farming kills insects. We obviously don't have the same amount of love for insects as we have for cows. But why should cows live and insects die? This comes back to killing humans, one way or the other. How many insects are a foetus? Are poor people not allowed to have children so that insects can keep on living?
  - seanwilson 6y ago
    > Where does this end? Industrial farming kills insects. We obviously don't have the same amount of love for insects as we have for cows. But why should cows live and insects die? Instead of doing nothing because there aren't any perfect solutions, start by aiming to minimise harm when there's realistic options to do so? e.g. avoid cow milk in favour of oat or soy milk. Dairy cows eat crops from industrial farming as well so if you're concerned about insects dying, less diary will likely help e.g. you could make milk directly from soy beans instead of feeding them to cows.
  - roebk 6y ago
    I think most people acknowledge that just by existing they’re causing harm. If you cut meat and diary out of your diet, you’re vastly reducing that harm. This isn’t just taking into consideration the cows, it’s also the vast quantities of crops that are grown to feed livestock. The largest study done on farm use was done by Oxford University a couple of years back and they found that “80 percent of the planet’s total farmland is used to rear livestock.” It continues with “freeing up land mass the size of Australia, China, the EU, and the U.S. – combined. This would lead to immensely fewer greenhouse gas emissions. It would also lessen the amount of wild land lost to agriculture, which is one of the leading causes of mass wildlife species extinction.” So for me, it ends at the meat and diary have a huge negative impact on the environment and I’ll do my best to reduce my share by avoiding meat and diary.
- lordgroff 6y ago
  I think it's quite simple: many vegetarians have no idea of the conditions in an average dairy farm. I was vegetarian for a number of years before I went vegan. I had assumed dairy cows had it reasonably good and it was quite a shock to find out how horrible their treatment teens to be.
- Retric 6y ago
  You get around 500 pounds of meat from a full grown cow. So, based on average US consumption that’s ~1 cow per 9 years per person. A single dairy cow produces ~100,000 lbs of milk over their lifespan. At average US consumption that’s ~1 cow per 200 years per person. US waste and exports make it hard to sanity check these numbers, but in 2018 there where 31.4 Million beef cows in US vs 9.4 milk cows adjusting for longer lifespan that’s possibly a 5.5:1 ratio.
  - natdempk 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, do you have a source for these numbers? It's interesting to hear that one dairy cow's lifespan effectively covers enough milk for two average human lifespans worth of consumption.
    - Retric 6y ago
      After posting that I kept digging and got slightly different numbers. Annual milk consumption from Wikipedia is just over 600lb per year in the US, where another source listed 500 lb (Might be milk vs milk + dairy products or an approximation?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_cons... For total milk production from Wikipedia “ The United States dairy herd produced 84.2 billion kilograms (185.7 billion pounds) of milk in 2007” https://www.statista.com/statistics/194302/number-of-beef-and-milk-cows-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/194302/number-of-beef-an.... Lists numbers of beef and dairy cows. 185.7 billion lb / 9.4 million cows = ~20,000 lb per year * ~5 year lifespan ~100k lb. https://albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/how-long-does-the-average-dairy-cow-live/ https://albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/how-long-does-the-a... However, I am not sure it’s a clear comparison as this may be excluding calf’s from these counts. Which would drop lifetime production closer to 60,000lb and better line up with other sources. https://extension.sdstate.edu/how-much-meat-can-you-expect-fed-steer https://extension.sdstate.edu/how-much-meat-can-you-expect-f... Suggest a typical cow at 490 lb of beef and this https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/statistics/per-capita-consumption-of-poultry-and-livestock-1965-to-estimated-2012-in-pounds/ https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/st... gives annual beef consumption of 58.1 lb beef per person per year (2019). PS: Of note dairy cows are also consumed for meat, though generally of lower quality. Which further muddles the issue suggesting that reducing milk consumption might simply increase the number of beef cattle ~1:1 to compensate.
- jhardy54 6y ago
  > Personally, I don't understand how vegetarians justify it as being much different in terms of animal cruelty. You're still paying into a system that's killing animals for your benefit. I've been vegan for years and I wish people wouldn't take this position publicly. I agree with you, but it's more effective to have lots of people consuming fewer animal products than a few people cutting out animal products "100%". (Of course it's never 100%, that'd be impossible unless you left society.) Let's be optimistic about the amount of change that normal people can do instead of chastising allies for not doing enough.
- harimau777 6y ago
  My understanding is that it's significantly easier to eat a healthy vegetarian diet than a healthy vegan diet. Therefore, it seems to me that vegetarianism is a reasonable compromise.
api 6y ago
We should figure out how to grow only the milk production parts.
BenjiWiebe 6y ago
I hope you realize that according to your description, there are very few of those "most efficient" dairies. For best milk production, the cows need to be kept happy and healthy. That means letting them have a place to go out of their barn, walk around, lay in the sun, etc. Also pumping them full of hormones is a thing of the past. Source: lived on a dairy farm all my life

hnarn 6y ago

I’m ideologically positive to vegetarianism and veganism but I’m so sick of this argument. Something being “made for humans” is in no way a positive — so is cocaine.

seanwilson 6y ago
> Something being “made for humans” is in no way a positive — so is cocaine. It's more of a spin from the phase "milk is for baby cows" though (not sure what the equivalent would be for cocaine). I used to roll my eyes at this as a naturalistic fallacy but point the being made here is: 1) cows do not give milk unless they've been pregnant 2) the newly born calves need to be separated from their mothers so there's more milk sell There's no similar ethical difficult with oats.
- hnarn 6y ago
  It's a pretty ridiculous simplification of how nature works. Animals being dependent on each-other is found everywhere in nature, and the fact is that cows at this point would stand almost no chance in nature since we have bred them to the point of cuddly teddy bears. So you could argue that cows get protection and we get milk, it's not necessarily exploitation in my mind until you get to the point where you talk about industrial production of meat and dairy, which to be honest is pretty cruel and horrifying in parts.
  - seanwilson 6y ago
    > Animals being dependent on each-other is found everywhere in nature Human ethics clearly shouldn't and aren't based on what other animals do to each other though. > the fact is that cows at this point would stand almost no chance in nature since we have bred them to the point of cuddly teddy bears You could justify anything with this argument: "doing X to Y is bad, but we've specifically bred Y to have X done to them such that Y can't survive in the wild anymore, therefore it's okay to do X". Just stop breeding them. There's related species in the wild that will live on.
    - 6y ago

Spooky23 6y ago

“Made for humans” has nothing to do with human nutrition, it’s about making humans rich selling a low content, high profit product. The ads and PR about the various sugary cloudy white water drinks always de-empathize the sugar delivery, and the marketing always subtly supports the ignorant faux ethical arguments around dairy pushed with religious zeal by certain groups.

seanwilson 6y ago
> the marketing always subtly supports the ignorant faux ethical arguments around dairy What faux ethical arguments are those? Oat milk is less resource intensive and reduces animal cruelty - those are compelling ethical arguments to me.

toretore 6y ago

Sorry, but I just have to make this funnysad joke.. Oat milk is made with rapeseed but cow's milk is made with rape seed.

prawn 6y ago

I believe that some dairies use "sexed" semen to minimise the ratio of male calves. Doesn't detract from the separation, etc though.

istjohn 6y ago
I didn't believe you, but: > The method works by staining sperm with a DNA-binding fluorescent dye. The bovine Y-chromosome-bearing sperm contain 3.8% less DNA than the X-chromosome-bearing sperm. Because of the dye, the male and female sperm can be electrically charged differently. This allows for their separation by a fluorescence-activated cell sorter (Seidel, 2007). The method is fairly accurate with ~90% of the sperm containing the desired sex (Garner and Seidel, 2003; DeJarnette et al., 2008). Sexed semen will contain a lower concentration of sperm per straw (approximately 2 million) than non-sexed semen (approximately 20 million) because the sorting process is relatively slow. Because of lower doses of sperm per straw, and possibly a negative effect of the sorting process, fertility of sexed sperm is typically lower compared with conventional sperm (Garner and Seidel, 2003; DeJarnette et al., 2008).[1] 1. https://dairy-cattle.extension.org/the-economics-of-sexed-semen-in-dairy-heifers-and-cows/#:~:text=The%20goal%20with%20sexed%20semen,(and%20better)%20heifer%20calves.&text=With%20heifers%20(and%20cows)%2C,typically%20not%20for%20later%20breedings https://dairy-cattle.extension.org/the-economics-of-sexed-se....
- prawn 6y ago
  I did some work filming dairies late last year and it was mentioned in the interviews. The biggest "industrial" dairy we visited had most of the cows under cover in large, open-sided sheds. The sheds were ventilated and the cows had fresh bedding regularly, and I'm confident this wasn't put on for us given we were a tiny camera crew. I expected it to be completely miserable but the areas the cows lay to ruminate was clean and they all looked very content. The cows in this operation were much, much cleaner than those at traditional, smaller dairies we visited (who got absolutely filthy with each other's waste, lying out in fields to ruminate). I imagine it's like being given food and allowed to sit on the couch watching TV all day, which is what half of us do already. Not sure if they have a solution for the separation and permanent pregnancy issues.

GuB-42 6y ago

That probably should be taught at school. That's the way farms work. Animals are slaughtered so you can eat them. The reason I think it should be taught at school is first because it basic knowledge. Farms employ a significant portion of the population of most countries, and that's what puts food on the table and keeps you alive. That's pretty important. Another reason is that school can teach that with a neutral point of view. Not like extremists who will describe any farm work involving animals as torture, and not like the interested food industry who wants you to forget that yes, animals are slaughtered to feed you. Personally, as a meat eater, I think that realizing that an animal died for your food helps respecting it. By that I mean don't waste it, cook it properly, appreciate the taste, and of course, prefer respectful farming practices as much as you can.

kiliantics 6y ago
I learned all of this in school in a country where agriculture was a significant segment of the economy. It was most definitely not taught with a "neutral point of view". Now that I have learned to understand the world with a more informed and nuanced perspective than the one my public education provided me with, I would certainly agree much more with the "extremists" you mention than any meat-eater justifications of how it "keeps you alive" or "respecting" the animals by eating them. And I say this as someone who still consumes meat and other animal products.
dunefox 6y ago
It takes quite a lot of doublethink to mention respect and eating animals in the same sentence. And I say this as a meat eater as well (although I heavily reduced consumption of animal products in the last few months).
- wst_ 6y ago
  The thing is that you have to kill to eat. Doesn't really matter what do you eat - something has to die for you to live. When you realize that, it's much easier to treat not only cows but everything around you with respect. We've got this respect long time ago and we've forgot about it all after agricultural revolution. Kind of sad...

parineum 6y ago

I really don't have a problem with these things. I don't have a problem killing animals for food, even baby cows. I also don't have a problem killing animals that can't be properly cared for (hello PETA). What I _do_ care about is how those animals are treated before they are killed. I am aware of the process for keeping dairy cows productive. I also am uncertain if the separation of calves and cows causes distress. I find it just as likely that assuming so is to anthropomorphize them. However, the reason I don't know the answer to that is because the treatment of farm animals in factory farms is far more concerning to me. The biggest disconnect between vegans and non-vegans seems to be the assertion that animals can't be raised ethically for food. Instead of focusing on areas of commonality between each other, a distaste for the unnecessary suffering of animals, each party focuses on the disagreements and can't get anything done together. Also, as an aside, the process you describe makes the cow's milk "made for humans" as much as anything is. Humans manipulate the cow's biology to produce milk for humans.

seanwilson 6y ago
> I also am uncertain if the separation of calves and cows causes distress. There's plenty of YouTube videos of how cows react to this. Most animals instinctively protect their offspring, and cows are social animals on top of this.

Chinjut 6y ago

How do dairy farmers do it in India (where milk is a huge thing, while beef, while also actually a large industry, is much more controversial)?

BenjiWiebe 6y ago

A cow does lactate for around 10 months before it would need to have a calf again. Also, a cow produces faaar more milk then one calf needs. Source: live on a dairy, grew up feeding calves. Used milk replacer for a while but then switched to plain milk cause it's healthier for the calves (no surprise)