11 ms·

Aren't there some ethical cow milking processes? Like regular, non-Mega AgriCorp farms?

vegannet 6y ago
You can sort-of argue that there are examples of ethical milking if you just consider the direct action of milking, however if we look to the bigger picture of dairy production — which includes how the cow came to be and what the milk is intended for and why the cow needs to be milked — it becomes more difficult because dairy cows have been bred to produce more milk to the detriment of their health: you’d need to find an example of the more broad “ethical dairy production” and that’s a lot more difficult, as almost all dairy production builds on the unethical behaviour of the past.
- 0xy 6y ago
  Are you suggesting we cull dairy cows to eliminate the tainted breed?
  - nobodywasishere 6y ago
    Not OP but I'm suggesting we never breed them into existence in the first place
    - merpnderp 6y ago
      Given human survival often relied upon farmed livestock how can you say this? By using this metric for a species's survival nearly nothing should be allowed to live. If you think farming animals is bad wait until you see a Hyena eating the guts out of an animal that is still alive, and will be for most of the meal.
      - svrtknst 6y ago
        hyenas or old human populations dont have the ability or opportunity to reduce harm we do farming animals is bad no matter what hyenas do, that's such a weird counterargument
        merpnderp 6y ago
        You obviously didn't even read the comment I was responding to or are misinterpreting my point so you can attack a straw man.
        jolux 6y ago
        I think the argument is that we have derived massive benefits from farming as a species that outweigh the amount of suffering we’ve caused in the process. I’m not sure I agree, but then I do eat meat.
        hombre_fatal 6y ago
        Well, their argument is surely either "we benefited from X then, thus we should continue doing X now despite having other options" or it's "animals already do bad things in nature, so why care when we do it despite having other options?" Neither of which is a very compelling position.
      - badRNG 6y ago
        >Given human survival often relied upon farmed livestock how can you say this? By using this metric for a species' survival nearly nothing should be allowed to live. When considering an ethical question, typically one must have the "ability to have acted differently." To be grotesque: I may be justified in eating a dead relative to survive in some nightmare scenario, however its permissibility here doesn't allow me the opportunity to desecrate human corpses for pleasurable eating. Is it possible there was a point at which humans were required to perform otherwise unethical acts to survive? Yes, absolutely. Does that permit the same behavior when its necessity no longer exists? I wouldn't think so. >If you think farming animals is bad wait until you see a Hyena eating the guts out of an animal that is still alive, and will be for most of the meal. Hyena's aren't moral agents, they cannot consider the ethical content of their decisions. Even if they were, the bad behavior of one moral agent usually isn't a justification for another's unethical behavior.
      - Falling3 6y ago
        What moral questions are you comfortable using the actions of hyenas to justify?
        merpnderp 6y ago
        How could this possibly pertain to the conversation you are responding to? Or do you just ask randos this question to make friends?
        Falling3 6y ago
        It pertains pretty specifically to the comment I replied to. I'm not sure how that's not clear?
        merpnderp 6y ago
        Since you don't seem to get the point, I'll turn it around. How many humans are comfortable causing the deaths of if you could go back in time and make sure no animals were ever domesticated for livestock? Are you comfortable killing a million people? A hundred million? Do you have a maximum?
        Falling3 6y ago
        Oh I see you were the original commenter as well. Are you disputing the idea that you tried to use the actions of a specific wild animal to justify our treatment of animals? I mean, I get it. It's a really common tactic. I'm just confused by your surprise.
        merpnderp 6y ago
        Why would you think I was the start of this thread, can't you see the usernames? A person said we should never have domesticated animals in the first place because it is cruel. I said that if being cruel to animals to ensure your species survival is wrong, nearly nothing deserves to live. You then took that out of context and made some bizarre assumptions about ethics and hyenas. You were wrong, and I get your confusion. Following these threads is hard. But it's okay.
  - vegannet 6y ago
    This is a funny line that I hear a lot as a vegan and it’s based on a misunderstanding. Veganism is actually quite pragmatic, veganism is not driven by saving lives it is driven by harm reduction. If I thought that the greatest harm reduction outcome for dairy cows could be achieved by a mass cull, I would support it.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  There is the same dilemma for many other animals too. What harm does it do to a chicken if you simply snatch the eggs it was already laying on your property, or shear a sheep that already had locks of wool? Unfortunately the first harm was done by breeding species that ovulate daily or produce so much fur that it would die without human intervention.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  My town has a Guernsey farm [1] just outside it, so that milk is available at our local food markets. It's wild how expensive it is. Like, the regular cheapo milk at the grocery store is $4-5 for 4L, and the Eby Manor milk is $5 for 1L, basically four times the cost. Now, they're a small time operation doing a specialty product, so I'm sure that contributes a lot to this cost bump— they justify this mostly by touting health benefits rather than talking about the sustainability of their operation, but I suspect that getting many animal-based food products to a more sustainable place would require a similarly eye-watering bump up in price. Which is, of course, part of the argument for going part-time vegetarian/vegan— get used to the idea of meat and animal products being something we enjoy once or twice a week or a few times a month, rather than multiple times per day. [1]: https://ebymanor.ca/our-family-farm/ https://ebymanor.ca/our-family-farm/
  - ThrowawayIP 6y ago
    Most of that page is dedicated to how "nicely" that farmer treats his herd. But, there are a few omissions. How do they care for cows that are no longer capable of becoming pregnant? [0] How do they control the size of the herd when each cow is giving birth about 3-4 times over a 4-5 year "lifespan?" Even at four times the cost, the industry doesn't look any better. [0]: https://www.agweb.com/article/deciding-when-dairy-cow-starts-her-second-career https://www.agweb.com/article/deciding-when-dairy-cow-starts...
hombre_fatal 6y ago
The mental image of a green sunny pasture with an old farmer milking a cow that just magically happens to be there, ready to be milked, is a fantasy limited to package marketing on cereal boxes. When you look into the details of how a dairy cow comes into being, the reality isn't quite so charming. Though there's also the fact that, even if ethical milk existed, for 99% of people it's just a warm thought they have while they buy whatever factory-farmed milk carton their grocer sells, myself included.
- tw04 6y ago
  I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. I grew up in small-town America and 30 years ago that was (almost) the image. While the farmers definitely didn't milk the cows by hand, they did attach the apparatus to each cow by hand and check on them. Also had plenty of green pasture for the cows to graze every day. Source: my best friend in elementary school was a "farm kid" and I thought it was fun to help do chores as a "city kid". I'm not going to sit here and claim that was EVERY farm 30 years ago, but from what I've seen of the mega-farms it was a HECK of a lot better than what's going on today.
- wincy 6y ago
  My friend tried to do the “ideal farmer” route, rather unintentionally. He bought a cow, who escaped and mated with a bull down the road. She had a calf, so he thought he’d share the milk the mother was producing with the calf. So he woke up at 6am to milk the cow. The calf started waking up at 5:30. So he woke up at 5am. So the calf started waking up at 4:30am. You see the pattern here. Turns out, calfs aren’t a big fan of having their milk taken, and there’s a reason they’re separated from their mother if you want to milk the cow. Edit: some people are saying that dairy cows produce more than the calf can drink. I don’t know if this was a dairy cow.
- adkadskhj 6y ago
  Isn't the same true for almost everything? Clothing, electronics, disposal of electronics, plastics, etcetc. Which isn't an excuse, it's just that - i don't know if i can throw a stick and not hit something humanity is actively and aggressively exploiting. The only way out of this that i see is to make "other things" our slaves. Eg, i don't think we can convince people to always pay for their shirts/phones/etc from ethical sources - even if they had the info to base those decisions off of. However once we get to the point where machines can outcompete slave wages that problem will start to realistically be mitigated.. i hope. Same is true for everything we're destroying i imagine. Humanity has no moral compass when beyond arms reach.. it seems.
philistine 6y ago
The only reasons cows give milk is because they gave birth. A cow’s life is to consistently be in a non-ending cycle of being artificially impregnated, giving birth and being milked dry while her young is not the sole drinker of her milk, as it should be. I am an avid milk drinker, who expects calcium deposits in his early 50s, and I know there is no ethical milk. I’m actively choosing the beautiful taste of cow’s milk knowing full well the pain and misery I’m inflicting on all those cows.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  While provocative, this is the inconvenient truth that most of us have certainly accepted. I myself drink milk and eat meat while acknowledging the obvious moral superiority of veganism. It's even hard to argue against veganism without sounding rather selfish or even psychopathic, as your argument, sooner or later, is going to boil down to "but I like it". So it's amazing how hard it is to change this habit. The path of least resistance and most convenience and least personal sacrifice is hard to leave despite living in violation of my own ethical standards. There's also something weird about our relationship with animals and food. We use ethical justifications (or avoid them) that we don't use anywhere else. Our eating habits are deep cultural traditions that don't budge in the face of even the most agreeable arguments to change them. "But it just feels too good to give up! XD" or "But if I stop, everyone else is still going to do it, so why stop!" aren't arguments we'd level at the carnal pleasures of rape, but when it comes to meat, they make everyone's head nod in agreement.
  - ThrowawayIP 6y ago
    The phrase that jumps to mind is "Nobody committing atrocities thinks _they_ are a monster."
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    For the sake of accuracy of the inconvenient truth, let's remember it's not just about drinking milk, but also consuming all the products that use milk as ingredient. Want to stop the suffering of cows? Kiss cheese, yogurt and butter goodbye.
merpnderp 6y ago
Ethical compared to what? Coyotes eating a cow alive while she laid down in a field to calve, starting with her hind quarters? A killer whale slowly nibbling another whale's calf to death over hours? So how do we measure the ethicality of a cow that has spent most of its life pampered, fed and protected, and in the end goes to a feedlot? How do we score that? What metrics do we use to compare? Because it certainly had a better life than a wolf casually stumbling upon it as a newborn.
- svrtknst 6y ago
  why are wild animals only used as an ethical measure tape when it comes to animal consumption?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    What else can we use? We can compare against the natural state (as GP did), which is mostly horror. We can compare against what would happen if we suddenly left these animals to live by themselves - which is even worse, and followed by extinction. We can compare against hypothetically caring about all animals as pets - but that's beyond our logistical capabilities and thus would cause great suffering for both animals and humans. There is no good measure tape available.
    - j_kao 6y ago
      I don't disagree that animals (cows in this case) in nature (whatever that looks like at this point) do suffer and are constantly under fear of predators. However, I think saying that there is "no good measure tape available" might be intellectually dishonest since we can probably come up with a rough model to optimize for the minimization of global suffering of all beings involved. Obviously, most mental models have a higher weight biased for humans rather than animals, so a suffering factor for humans would have a higher multiple than for animals. That is where most of the controversy seems to be.
      - s0rce 6y ago
svrtknst 6y ago
you've gotten a lot of replies regarding the lives of milk cows and how they're bred - one other factor athat I didn't see mentioned is that only about half of the calves turn into dairy oows, and the world has very little use for living bulls. The same issues arise in chicken farming, where it's impossible to have eggs or dairy without death. I saw some image of genetically modified eggs where they supposedly were able to control the sex of the chickens pre-birth, but in general, you need to kill about half of the animals born.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Or you could raise them to adulthood and consume them for meat. Once a cow or hen passes the age for producing milk or eggs, they are often sacrificed. The issue is that mass manufacture of meat has led to many bulls being killed at birth, because it's resource inefficient to raise them to adulthood. That's where we went wrong.
- Falling3 6y ago
  That's exactly where most veal comes from - the male offspring of dairy cows.
pstew 6y ago
No, to produce milk a cow needs to be pregnant or recently pregnant so milk production requires forced insemination and giving birth to the calf. After birth, the calf is separated from the mother to be caged for veal, raised as a milking cow, etc., and the mother is re-inseminated so she can keep producing milk and the process starts over.
- jcampbell1 6y ago
  The process you describe is true for organic milk, but less true for regular milk. Modern dairy farms use sex selected semen to prevent males from being born and they use synthetic hormones to extend milk production. Not much excess calving happens in big dairy.
  - ThrowawayIP 6y ago
    I'd like to see the citation for that and an example of its application outside of a laboratory setting (if there is one.)

You can sort-of argue that there are examples of ethical milking if you just consider the direct action of milking, however if we look to the bigger picture of dairy production — which includes how the cow came to be and what the milk is intended for and why the cow needs to be milked — it becomes more difficult because dairy cows have been bred to produce more milk to the detriment of their health: you’d need to find an example of the more broad “ethical dairy production” and that’s a lot more difficult, as almost all dairy production builds on the unethical behaviour of the past.

0xy 6y ago
Are you suggesting we cull dairy cows to eliminate the tainted breed?
- nobodywasishere 6y ago
  Not OP but I'm suggesting we never breed them into existence in the first place
  - merpnderp 6y ago
    Given human survival often relied upon farmed livestock how can you say this? By using this metric for a species's survival nearly nothing should be allowed to live. If you think farming animals is bad wait until you see a Hyena eating the guts out of an animal that is still alive, and will be for most of the meal.
    - svrtknst 6y ago
      hyenas or old human populations dont have the ability or opportunity to reduce harm we do farming animals is bad no matter what hyenas do, that's such a weird counterargument
      - merpnderp 6y ago
        You obviously didn't even read the comment I was responding to or are misinterpreting my point so you can attack a straw man.
      - jolux 6y ago
        I think the argument is that we have derived massive benefits from farming as a species that outweigh the amount of suffering we’ve caused in the process. I’m not sure I agree, but then I do eat meat.
        hombre_fatal 6y ago
        Well, their argument is surely either "we benefited from X then, thus we should continue doing X now despite having other options" or it's "animals already do bad things in nature, so why care when we do it despite having other options?" Neither of which is a very compelling position.
    - badRNG 6y ago
      >Given human survival often relied upon farmed livestock how can you say this? By using this metric for a species' survival nearly nothing should be allowed to live. When considering an ethical question, typically one must have the "ability to have acted differently." To be grotesque: I may be justified in eating a dead relative to survive in some nightmare scenario, however its permissibility here doesn't allow me the opportunity to desecrate human corpses for pleasurable eating. Is it possible there was a point at which humans were required to perform otherwise unethical acts to survive? Yes, absolutely. Does that permit the same behavior when its necessity no longer exists? I wouldn't think so. >If you think farming animals is bad wait until you see a Hyena eating the guts out of an animal that is still alive, and will be for most of the meal. Hyena's aren't moral agents, they cannot consider the ethical content of their decisions. Even if they were, the bad behavior of one moral agent usually isn't a justification for another's unethical behavior.
    - Falling3 6y ago
      What moral questions are you comfortable using the actions of hyenas to justify?
      - merpnderp 6y ago
        How could this possibly pertain to the conversation you are responding to? Or do you just ask randos this question to make friends?
        Falling3 6y ago
        It pertains pretty specifically to the comment I replied to. I'm not sure how that's not clear?
        merpnderp 6y ago
        Since you don't seem to get the point, I'll turn it around. How many humans are comfortable causing the deaths of if you could go back in time and make sure no animals were ever domesticated for livestock? Are you comfortable killing a million people? A hundred million? Do you have a maximum?
        Falling3 6y ago
        Oh I see you were the original commenter as well. Are you disputing the idea that you tried to use the actions of a specific wild animal to justify our treatment of animals? I mean, I get it. It's a really common tactic. I'm just confused by your surprise.
        merpnderp 6y ago
        Why would you think I was the start of this thread, can't you see the usernames? A person said we should never have domesticated animals in the first place because it is cruel. I said that if being cruel to animals to ensure your species survival is wrong, nearly nothing deserves to live. You then took that out of context and made some bizarre assumptions about ethics and hyenas. You were wrong, and I get your confusion. Following these threads is hard. But it's okay.
- vegannet 6y ago
  This is a funny line that I hear a lot as a vegan and it’s based on a misunderstanding. Veganism is actually quite pragmatic, veganism is not driven by saving lives it is driven by harm reduction. If I thought that the greatest harm reduction outcome for dairy cows could be achieved by a mass cull, I would support it.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
There is the same dilemma for many other animals too. What harm does it do to a chicken if you simply snatch the eggs it was already laying on your property, or shear a sheep that already had locks of wool? Unfortunately the first harm was done by breeding species that ovulate daily or produce so much fur that it would die without human intervention.
mikepurvis 6y ago
My town has a Guernsey farm [1] just outside it, so that milk is available at our local food markets. It's wild how expensive it is. Like, the regular cheapo milk at the grocery store is $4-5 for 4L, and the Eby Manor milk is $5 for 1L, basically four times the cost. Now, they're a small time operation doing a specialty product, so I'm sure that contributes a lot to this cost bump— they justify this mostly by touting health benefits rather than talking about the sustainability of their operation, but I suspect that getting many animal-based food products to a more sustainable place would require a similarly eye-watering bump up in price. Which is, of course, part of the argument for going part-time vegetarian/vegan— get used to the idea of meat and animal products being something we enjoy once or twice a week or a few times a month, rather than multiple times per day. [1]: https://ebymanor.ca/our-family-farm/ https://ebymanor.ca/our-family-farm/
- ThrowawayIP 6y ago
  Most of that page is dedicated to how "nicely" that farmer treats his herd. But, there are a few omissions. How do they care for cows that are no longer capable of becoming pregnant? [0] How do they control the size of the herd when each cow is giving birth about 3-4 times over a 4-5 year "lifespan?" Even at four times the cost, the industry doesn't look any better. [0]: https://www.agweb.com/article/deciding-when-dairy-cow-starts-her-second-career https://www.agweb.com/article/deciding-when-dairy-cow-starts...

hombre_fatal 6y ago

The mental image of a green sunny pasture with an old farmer milking a cow that just magically happens to be there, ready to be milked, is a fantasy limited to package marketing on cereal boxes. When you look into the details of how a dairy cow comes into being, the reality isn't quite so charming. Though there's also the fact that, even if ethical milk existed, for 99% of people it's just a warm thought they have while they buy whatever factory-farmed milk carton their grocer sells, myself included.

tw04 6y ago
I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. I grew up in small-town America and 30 years ago that was (almost) the image. While the farmers definitely didn't milk the cows by hand, they did attach the apparatus to each cow by hand and check on them. Also had plenty of green pasture for the cows to graze every day. Source: my best friend in elementary school was a "farm kid" and I thought it was fun to help do chores as a "city kid". I'm not going to sit here and claim that was EVERY farm 30 years ago, but from what I've seen of the mega-farms it was a HECK of a lot better than what's going on today.
wincy 6y ago
My friend tried to do the “ideal farmer” route, rather unintentionally. He bought a cow, who escaped and mated with a bull down the road. She had a calf, so he thought he’d share the milk the mother was producing with the calf. So he woke up at 6am to milk the cow. The calf started waking up at 5:30. So he woke up at 5am. So the calf started waking up at 4:30am. You see the pattern here. Turns out, calfs aren’t a big fan of having their milk taken, and there’s a reason they’re separated from their mother if you want to milk the cow. Edit: some people are saying that dairy cows produce more than the calf can drink. I don’t know if this was a dairy cow.
adkadskhj 6y ago
Isn't the same true for almost everything? Clothing, electronics, disposal of electronics, plastics, etcetc. Which isn't an excuse, it's just that - i don't know if i can throw a stick and not hit something humanity is actively and aggressively exploiting. The only way out of this that i see is to make "other things" our slaves. Eg, i don't think we can convince people to always pay for their shirts/phones/etc from ethical sources - even if they had the info to base those decisions off of. However once we get to the point where machines can outcompete slave wages that problem will start to realistically be mitigated.. i hope. Same is true for everything we're destroying i imagine. Humanity has no moral compass when beyond arms reach.. it seems.

philistine 6y ago

The only reasons cows give milk is because they gave birth. A cow’s life is to consistently be in a non-ending cycle of being artificially impregnated, giving birth and being milked dry while her young is not the sole drinker of her milk, as it should be. I am an avid milk drinker, who expects calcium deposits in his early 50s, and I know there is no ethical milk. I’m actively choosing the beautiful taste of cow’s milk knowing full well the pain and misery I’m inflicting on all those cows.

hombre_fatal 6y ago
While provocative, this is the inconvenient truth that most of us have certainly accepted. I myself drink milk and eat meat while acknowledging the obvious moral superiority of veganism. It's even hard to argue against veganism without sounding rather selfish or even psychopathic, as your argument, sooner or later, is going to boil down to "but I like it". So it's amazing how hard it is to change this habit. The path of least resistance and most convenience and least personal sacrifice is hard to leave despite living in violation of my own ethical standards. There's also something weird about our relationship with animals and food. We use ethical justifications (or avoid them) that we don't use anywhere else. Our eating habits are deep cultural traditions that don't budge in the face of even the most agreeable arguments to change them. "But it just feels too good to give up! XD" or "But if I stop, everyone else is still going to do it, so why stop!" aren't arguments we'd level at the carnal pleasures of rape, but when it comes to meat, they make everyone's head nod in agreement.
- ThrowawayIP 6y ago
  The phrase that jumps to mind is "Nobody committing atrocities thinks _they_ are a monster."
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  For the sake of accuracy of the inconvenient truth, let's remember it's not just about drinking milk, but also consuming all the products that use milk as ingredient. Want to stop the suffering of cows? Kiss cheese, yogurt and butter goodbye.

merpnderp 6y ago

Ethical compared to what? Coyotes eating a cow alive while she laid down in a field to calve, starting with her hind quarters? A killer whale slowly nibbling another whale's calf to death over hours? So how do we measure the ethicality of a cow that has spent most of its life pampered, fed and protected, and in the end goes to a feedlot? How do we score that? What metrics do we use to compare? Because it certainly had a better life than a wolf casually stumbling upon it as a newborn.

svrtknst 6y ago
why are wild animals only used as an ethical measure tape when it comes to animal consumption?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  What else can we use? We can compare against the natural state (as GP did), which is mostly horror. We can compare against what would happen if we suddenly left these animals to live by themselves - which is even worse, and followed by extinction. We can compare against hypothetically caring about all animals as pets - but that's beyond our logistical capabilities and thus would cause great suffering for both animals and humans. There is no good measure tape available.
  - j_kao 6y ago
    I don't disagree that animals (cows in this case) in nature (whatever that looks like at this point) do suffer and are constantly under fear of predators. However, I think saying that there is "no good measure tape available" might be intellectually dishonest since we can probably come up with a rough model to optimize for the minimization of global suffering of all beings involved. Obviously, most mental models have a higher weight biased for humans rather than animals, so a suffering factor for humans would have a higher multiple than for animals. That is where most of the controversy seems to be.
    - s0rce 6y ago

svrtknst 6y ago

you've gotten a lot of replies regarding the lives of milk cows and how they're bred - one other factor athat I didn't see mentioned is that only about half of the calves turn into dairy oows, and the world has very little use for living bulls. The same issues arise in chicken farming, where it's impossible to have eggs or dairy without death. I saw some image of genetically modified eggs where they supposedly were able to control the sex of the chickens pre-birth, but in general, you need to kill about half of the animals born.

fakedang 6y ago
Or you could raise them to adulthood and consume them for meat. Once a cow or hen passes the age for producing milk or eggs, they are often sacrificed. The issue is that mass manufacture of meat has led to many bulls being killed at birth, because it's resource inefficient to raise them to adulthood. That's where we went wrong.
Falling3 6y ago
That's exactly where most veal comes from - the male offspring of dairy cows.

pstew 6y ago

No, to produce milk a cow needs to be pregnant or recently pregnant so milk production requires forced insemination and giving birth to the calf. After birth, the calf is separated from the mother to be caged for veal, raised as a milking cow, etc., and the mother is re-inseminated so she can keep producing milk and the process starts over.

jcampbell1 6y ago
The process you describe is true for organic milk, but less true for regular milk. Modern dairy farms use sex selected semen to prevent males from being born and they use synthetic hormones to extend milk production. Not much excess calving happens in big dairy.
- ThrowawayIP 6y ago
  I'd like to see the citation for that and an example of its application outside of a laboratory setting (if there is one.)