8 ms·

Can dairy farming ever be sustainable?

27 points by niviachanta 6y ago

ycombonator 6y ago
the only emissions i see are the flatulence from the bs of the activist “journos”. i am still waiting for them to do a story on chinese emissions.
drewg123 6y ago
I think the answer is "no". Cow's milk requires far more land & water, and produces far more emissions than other types of "milk". See the chart here: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042 It seems clear that cows milk has the most environmental impact of any "milk". I've recently switched from cow's milk to almond milk for my cereal, and to an oat-milk based creamer for my coffee, and I don't miss "real" milk/cream at all. My ancestors are rolling over in their graves though, as my grandfather and both my uncles were dairy farmers.
- haram_masala 6y ago
  Is almond milk an improvement with regards to environmental impact, though? Almonds are a very resource-intensive crop, and in my experience there’s a lot of waste involved when making almond milk.
  - drewg123 6y ago
    My understanding is that almond milk is not good, but is far better than cow's milk. Oat milk supposedly has the least impact. See the chart in the article I linked in up-thread.
    - antisthenes 6y ago
      Far better in what sense? Almond "milk" has almost no nutritional content compared to real milk. It's useless for people trying to gain weight/muscle mass. It has ~20% of the protein and fat content of regular whole milk, so at the very minimum it has to be 5x environmentally friendly. In fact it is so nutritionally empty, that it is more fitting to compare it to slightly sugared water, and see if it beats that on environmental record.
      - foopod 6y ago
        I imagine most people trying to gain weight/muscle are not using milk to do it. I think more people drink milk purely out of habit/pleasure.
- tobib 6y ago
  I recently made my own oat "milk" and it was surprisingly tasty, too. I'd like to switch to it completely but haven't had the time to find the perfect recipe for us. So it's mostly unsweetened soy milk for us. As far as I know, emissions from producing soy milk are far lower than those of dairy but correct me if I'm wrong.
- snarf21 6y ago
  So you want a world no only with no milk but no butter or cheese or sour cream or yogurt or cream cheese or ice cream or ... ? No thanks, I think we have bigger problems and other ways to solve our environment issues, they are just a lot less popular. Plus, it is kind of silly to think about since it would never happen. Better to tax coal and gas into oblivion.
  - drewg123 6y ago
    Surprisingly, cows are worse for the environment than cars. That sounds insane, and it took me a while to believe it myself. But do your own research. I have had dairy-free versions of all of the foods above. Most are really good, though I have to admit that I don't care for the vegan cream cheeses that I've tried.
    - exoji2e 6y ago
      Have you tried this one - I really enjoy it, but maybe I've been vegan for too long to remember what regular cream cheese tastes like... https://violifefoods.com/product/original-flavour-creamy/ https://violifefoods.com/product/original-flavour-creamy/
      - drewg123 6y ago
        Yes, there is some in my fridge right now! Its the best I've had, but still not as good as the real thing to me. In general, I think Violife does the best job with imitation cheeses.
      - bradbeattie 6y ago
        Tofutti's cream cheese does it for me. Likewise can't quite recall the difference, but I enjoy it nonetheless.
  - exoji2e 6y ago
    There are quite a lot of delicious vegan alternatives. Some cheeses seem difficult to reinvent as vegan options, but the rest that you mention definitely have great alternatives. Those alternatives were a lot worse 5 years ago. The dairy industry will probably not vanish completely or directly, but when the vegan alternatives are good enough for the majority, combined with a generational shift the dairy industry will start decreasing rapidly. So the notion that "it would never happen" is a bit silly imo. I predict that the global dairy industry will be cut by half in 10 years.
- RamshackleJ 6y ago
  I went through a phase of drinking milk substitutes but I'm back to milk. The glycemic index of most milk substitutes (oat,soy,almond) are equivalent or greater than a can of coke. Milk substitutes also tend to be really really high in vegetable oils that seem to at least have a troubling correlation with chronic disease. The metrics used for the environmental impact of intensive animal husbandry tend too skew towards the worst case (obese cows on a grain fed diet in a feedlot). There are plenty of dairy farms raising cows with a more sustainable grass-based diet that doesn't release nearly as much methane (Think how gassey you'd be if the only thing you ate was ice-cream?) I like supporting my local dairy farmers, more than I enjoy supporting some multi-national milk-substitute beverage company with a supply chain spanning the globe.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    Yep. Turns out that milk is actually really healthy for you, at least if you belong to a population group that evolved the ability to digest lactose. (Lactose-free milk is getting better, though it's still too sweet; A2 milk (w/o the A1 proteins) is an interesting option for some people). I get it, the cows aren't living their most self-actualized life, but I basically sit in a stall all day producing code and documentation, so while I can empathize with them, it doesn't mean I want to pay a bunch more so _they_ get to go outside all day while I'm still stuck here on the git treadmill.
  - foopod 6y ago
    I am very interested in this as I only drink alternatives now and although not very much I will often eat foods made from the same ingredients (soy, almond, etc). Glycemic Index - Are we talking about sweetened milk alternatives here? From what I have seen most alternatives come out the same or lower than dairy milk unless they have added sugar. Vegetable Oil - I am sure alternatives contain more vegetable oils, but interested to know what you mean by "really really high". The opposing side is dairy milk containing saturated fat which has it's own implications. Would love to see some studies if you have any handy.
    - RamshackleJ 6y ago
- zokier 6y ago
  Only if you consider "bulk" consumption of dairy. Make it a luxury good, raise prices by few orders of magnitude and reduce the production accordingly and I'm sure you start finding ways to make it sustainable enough.
kylegill 6y ago
I visited a friend's family dairy farm in a little town in Utah a few months back and it was quite a change from the tech bubble I tend to dwell in. I think this article reads pretty fair to the mindset of my friend's family too. My friend's family has been dairy farmers for generations, and their dad loves the hard work seemingly because it's turned into a part of his identity. They've started seeing the writing on the wall and have picked up other crops and animals to "diversify their portfolio" a little.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  Less of a “handwriting on the wall” and more of a “following an eternally prudent small farm management strategy”. ‘Twas ever thus.
- niviachanta 6y ago
  There's an excellent Slate article that's an interview with a former climate change denier & it interviews a farmer named Megan Brown. I follow her now on Twitter & it's a reaaaally valuable perspective to keep learning about the foods that literally keep us + our economy alive + how toxic much of the ag world can be (in her opinion) https://twitter.com/MegRaeB https://twitter.com/MegRaeB
landon32 6y ago
Good analysis on how to reduce the carbon emissions of cows: https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable/ https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustain... Basically feed them seaweed and try to manage the land in a way that sequesters CO2 on balance
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  cow are ruminants. they are not meant to be fed seaweed. they turn grass and sunshine into protein and fat. https://extension.umn.edu/dairy-nutrition/ruminant-digestive-system https://extension.umn.edu/dairy-nutrition/ruminant-digestive... [..]The rumen (on the left side of the animal) is the largest stomach compartment and consists of several sacs. It can hold 25 gallons or more of material depending on the size of the cow. Because of its size, the rumen acts as a storage or holding vat for feed. Aside from storage, the rumen is also a fermentation vat.[..] we get milk because their stomachs are basically fermentation vats. if cows dont fart, they are not rumen. what are we doing? https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-health-literacy/how-cows-eat-grass https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-health-literacy...
  - jnwatson 6y ago
    Not all ruminants produce methane at the prodigious rate that cows do. The fermentation process is a complicated mix of biota. Just a small change in diet of a few percent seaweed makes a huge difference in methane output.
scottlocklin 6y ago
Yet another "eat the cockroach protein, peasant" message from our lizard overlords. Thanks for sharing guys.
- haram_masala 6y ago
  This seems excessively harsh. I don’t think we should doubt the sincerity of people who believe that modern agriculture should be transformed in order to reduce its climate impact.
  - RamshackleJ 6y ago
    haha yeah it does come off a bit harsh. I don't doubt their sincerity but am definitely curious about how many farms they've visited. If anytime you think of meat/dairy you think of mcdonalds style feedlot hellscapes, you're out of touch. Your oat/soy milks are coming from giant monocrop fields, loaded up on pesticides, fertilized with the poo scraped off the feedlots you hate. I think its much more likely that dairy production becomes more sustainable than it gets replaced by even more intensive monocropping.
phnofive 6y ago
There’s a vast difference between selling milk and selling dairy products; milk’s impracticality - shipping water that must be kept under refrigeration and easily spoils - is evident, but cheese, butter, yogurt - none of which discussed in this article - will readily command a premium. I’d have loved to hear about feed additives under development to curb emissions, but the condescension throughout aligns with the general tone of pity for an industry presumed terminal.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
short answer: no. slightly longer answer: not if there are subsidies. i will have to devote more time and attention to a longer proper answer that i feel obligated to provide. i hope to revisit this again once work ebbs.
xupybd 6y ago
Naive question. If cattle eat on grass how can they increase CO2 emissions? I know farming will create some to run the machinery and transport the meant and milk but isn't it a closed loop for the cattle? They eat grass for energy. They use that energy and create CO2. But the grass had to pull the same amount of CO2 out of the air to store that energy right? Is it that the other gases are more harmful or is there something I'm missing?
- Turing_Machine 6y ago
  That's not a naive question at all, and the answer is that they can't. Cows don't have little nuclear fusion reactors in their rumens, producing carbon from other elements, nor do they eat fossil fuels. Every atom of carbon "emitted" by a cow was taken from the atmosphere by a plant, likely a year ago at most. Now, methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, but it breaks down over time. The cycle can be perfectly "sustainable". Much of the land in the United States that is currently occupied in grazing cattle was formerly inhabited by vast herds of American bison, an animal so genetically similar to domestic cattle that they can actually interbreed, yet the methane emissions from the bison didn't bring on a global climate crisis. Why not?
  - RC_ITR 6y ago
    Well for one, there are 2x as many cows in America today than there ever were bison. For 2, we “turn” cows faster by killing them to eat them (rather than letting nature sort it out). So that 2x is then multiplied by some factor For 3, our consumption habits have exported the cow to new environments where bison were not native (like Brazil).
    - Turing_Machine 6y ago
      > Well for one, there are 2x as many cows in America today than there ever were bison. (citation needed) > For 2, we “turn” cows faster by killing them to eat them (rather than letting nature sort it out). So that 2x is then multiplied by some factor Neither the absolute number nor the turnover rate matter. Only the raw amount of biomass. The turnover rate has nothing to do with the fact that essentially all the carbon emitted by the cow was recently removed from the atmosphere by a plant, making the whole process carbon-neutral. > For 3, our consumption habits have exported the cow to new environments where bison were not native (like Brazil). I limited my observation to the United States for a reason, but okay, I'll bite. How does a cow being "in Brazil" change the fact that any carbon it emits was almost certainly removed from the atmosphere by a plant within the last year, making the cow's digestion effectively carbon-neutral?
pochamago 6y ago
Man, let's just invest in societal carbon capture machines already, so we can stop talking about killing off desirable industries
subculture 6y ago
These folksy farmers pretend like they're part of rich heritage of humanity - the dairy farmer through the ages supplying people with a healthy and necessary drink. Dairy production is just another demand created in the modern world by marketers and little to do with actual nutrition [1]. The dairy farmers in this article try to portray a peaceful relationship between farmer and cow, yet 99% of dairy in the US is produced in factory farms quite different from idyllic pastures [2]. More like what we're seeing in China with multi-story pig farms [3]. I think economics, environment and consumer behavior could easily wipe out the dairy industry, except that it's an integral part of food/industrial production. You obvs don't have a cheese industry without dairy, but you also don't have a source of male cows for the veal industry, a source of bones and other parts for the myriad other uses like adhesives, filtration (bone char filtration makes sugar white [4]), chemicals, textiles, etc. [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/4/19/8447883/milk-health-benefit https://www.vox.com/2015/4/19/8447883/milk-health-benefit [2] https://www.livekindly.co/99-animal-products-factory-farms/ https://www.livekindly.co/99-animal-products-factory-farms/ [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/18/a-12-storey-pig-farm-has-china-found-a-way-to-stop-future-pandemics- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/18/a-12-sto... [4] https://www.journalofnaturalmedicine.com/sugar-companies-that-use-bone-char-filters/ https://www.journalofnaturalmedicine.com/sugar-companies-tha...
Simulacra 6y ago
A better question: Can concentrated animal feeding operation's ever be sustainable? It's not just dairy, but the vast majority of the agricultural meat markets.
foopod 6y ago
It blows my mind that we are still doing this. It's not sustainable, it's not ethical, heck, it's not even good for us. It's a pleasure/habit thing. The alternatives have been getting a lot better and a lot more popular too. It won't be long till the dairy industry has to do something drastic [0]. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40274645 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40274645
harimau777 6y ago
The problem that I see with these sorts of articles is that there aren't viable alternatives. If people want us to eat differently then they need to create viable alternatives.
amriksohata 6y ago
Cowspiracy is a great documentary

27 points by niviachanta 6y ago

the only emissions i see are the flatulence from the bs of the activist “journos”. i am still waiting for them to do a story on chinese emissions.

drewg123 6y ago

I think the answer is "no". Cow's milk requires far more land & water, and produces far more emissions than other types of "milk". See the chart here: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042 It seems clear that cows milk has the most environmental impact of any "milk". I've recently switched from cow's milk to almond milk for my cereal, and to an oat-milk based creamer for my coffee, and I don't miss "real" milk/cream at all. My ancestors are rolling over in their graves though, as my grandfather and both my uncles were dairy farmers.

haram_masala 6y ago
Is almond milk an improvement with regards to environmental impact, though? Almonds are a very resource-intensive crop, and in my experience there’s a lot of waste involved when making almond milk.
- drewg123 6y ago
  My understanding is that almond milk is not good, but is far better than cow's milk. Oat milk supposedly has the least impact. See the chart in the article I linked in up-thread.
  - antisthenes 6y ago
    Far better in what sense? Almond "milk" has almost no nutritional content compared to real milk. It's useless for people trying to gain weight/muscle mass. It has ~20% of the protein and fat content of regular whole milk, so at the very minimum it has to be 5x environmentally friendly. In fact it is so nutritionally empty, that it is more fitting to compare it to slightly sugared water, and see if it beats that on environmental record.
    - foopod 6y ago
      I imagine most people trying to gain weight/muscle are not using milk to do it. I think more people drink milk purely out of habit/pleasure.
tobib 6y ago
I recently made my own oat "milk" and it was surprisingly tasty, too. I'd like to switch to it completely but haven't had the time to find the perfect recipe for us. So it's mostly unsweetened soy milk for us. As far as I know, emissions from producing soy milk are far lower than those of dairy but correct me if I'm wrong.
snarf21 6y ago
So you want a world no only with no milk but no butter or cheese or sour cream or yogurt or cream cheese or ice cream or ... ? No thanks, I think we have bigger problems and other ways to solve our environment issues, they are just a lot less popular. Plus, it is kind of silly to think about since it would never happen. Better to tax coal and gas into oblivion.
- drewg123 6y ago
  Surprisingly, cows are worse for the environment than cars. That sounds insane, and it took me a while to believe it myself. But do your own research. I have had dairy-free versions of all of the foods above. Most are really good, though I have to admit that I don't care for the vegan cream cheeses that I've tried.
  - exoji2e 6y ago
    Have you tried this one - I really enjoy it, but maybe I've been vegan for too long to remember what regular cream cheese tastes like... https://violifefoods.com/product/original-flavour-creamy/ https://violifefoods.com/product/original-flavour-creamy/
    - drewg123 6y ago
      Yes, there is some in my fridge right now! Its the best I've had, but still not as good as the real thing to me. In general, I think Violife does the best job with imitation cheeses.
    - bradbeattie 6y ago
      Tofutti's cream cheese does it for me. Likewise can't quite recall the difference, but I enjoy it nonetheless.
- exoji2e 6y ago
  There are quite a lot of delicious vegan alternatives. Some cheeses seem difficult to reinvent as vegan options, but the rest that you mention definitely have great alternatives. Those alternatives were a lot worse 5 years ago. The dairy industry will probably not vanish completely or directly, but when the vegan alternatives are good enough for the majority, combined with a generational shift the dairy industry will start decreasing rapidly. So the notion that "it would never happen" is a bit silly imo. I predict that the global dairy industry will be cut by half in 10 years.
RamshackleJ 6y ago
I went through a phase of drinking milk substitutes but I'm back to milk. The glycemic index of most milk substitutes (oat,soy,almond) are equivalent or greater than a can of coke. Milk substitutes also tend to be really really high in vegetable oils that seem to at least have a troubling correlation with chronic disease. The metrics used for the environmental impact of intensive animal husbandry tend too skew towards the worst case (obese cows on a grain fed diet in a feedlot). There are plenty of dairy farms raising cows with a more sustainable grass-based diet that doesn't release nearly as much methane (Think how gassey you'd be if the only thing you ate was ice-cream?) I like supporting my local dairy farmers, more than I enjoy supporting some multi-national milk-substitute beverage company with a supply chain spanning the globe.
- core-questions 6y ago
  Yep. Turns out that milk is actually really healthy for you, at least if you belong to a population group that evolved the ability to digest lactose. (Lactose-free milk is getting better, though it's still too sweet; A2 milk (w/o the A1 proteins) is an interesting option for some people). I get it, the cows aren't living their most self-actualized life, but I basically sit in a stall all day producing code and documentation, so while I can empathize with them, it doesn't mean I want to pay a bunch more so _they_ get to go outside all day while I'm still stuck here on the git treadmill.
- foopod 6y ago
  I am very interested in this as I only drink alternatives now and although not very much I will often eat foods made from the same ingredients (soy, almond, etc). Glycemic Index - Are we talking about sweetened milk alternatives here? From what I have seen most alternatives come out the same or lower than dairy milk unless they have added sugar. Vegetable Oil - I am sure alternatives contain more vegetable oils, but interested to know what you mean by "really really high". The opposing side is dairy milk containing saturated fat which has it's own implications. Would love to see some studies if you have any handy.
  - RamshackleJ 6y ago
zokier 6y ago
Only if you consider "bulk" consumption of dairy. Make it a luxury good, raise prices by few orders of magnitude and reduce the production accordingly and I'm sure you start finding ways to make it sustainable enough.

kylegill 6y ago

I visited a friend's family dairy farm in a little town in Utah a few months back and it was quite a change from the tech bubble I tend to dwell in. I think this article reads pretty fair to the mindset of my friend's family too. My friend's family has been dairy farmers for generations, and their dad loves the hard work seemingly because it's turned into a part of his identity. They've started seeing the writing on the wall and have picked up other crops and animals to "diversify their portfolio" a little.

onecommentman 6y ago
Less of a “handwriting on the wall” and more of a “following an eternally prudent small farm management strategy”. ‘Twas ever thus.
niviachanta 6y ago
There's an excellent Slate article that's an interview with a former climate change denier & it interviews a farmer named Megan Brown. I follow her now on Twitter & it's a reaaaally valuable perspective to keep learning about the foods that literally keep us + our economy alive + how toxic much of the ag world can be (in her opinion) https://twitter.com/MegRaeB https://twitter.com/MegRaeB

landon32 6y ago

Good analysis on how to reduce the carbon emissions of cows: https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable/ https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustain... Basically feed them seaweed and try to manage the land in a way that sequesters CO2 on balance

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
cow are ruminants. they are not meant to be fed seaweed. they turn grass and sunshine into protein and fat. https://extension.umn.edu/dairy-nutrition/ruminant-digestive-system https://extension.umn.edu/dairy-nutrition/ruminant-digestive... [..]The rumen (on the left side of the animal) is the largest stomach compartment and consists of several sacs. It can hold 25 gallons or more of material depending on the size of the cow. Because of its size, the rumen acts as a storage or holding vat for feed. Aside from storage, the rumen is also a fermentation vat.[..] we get milk because their stomachs are basically fermentation vats. if cows dont fart, they are not rumen. what are we doing? https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-health-literacy/how-cows-eat-grass https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-health-literacy...
- jnwatson 6y ago
  Not all ruminants produce methane at the prodigious rate that cows do. The fermentation process is a complicated mix of biota. Just a small change in diet of a few percent seaweed makes a huge difference in methane output.

scottlocklin 6y ago

Yet another "eat the cockroach protein, peasant" message from our lizard overlords. Thanks for sharing guys.

haram_masala 6y ago
This seems excessively harsh. I don’t think we should doubt the sincerity of people who believe that modern agriculture should be transformed in order to reduce its climate impact.
- RamshackleJ 6y ago
  haha yeah it does come off a bit harsh. I don't doubt their sincerity but am definitely curious about how many farms they've visited. If anytime you think of meat/dairy you think of mcdonalds style feedlot hellscapes, you're out of touch. Your oat/soy milks are coming from giant monocrop fields, loaded up on pesticides, fertilized with the poo scraped off the feedlots you hate. I think its much more likely that dairy production becomes more sustainable than it gets replaced by even more intensive monocropping.

phnofive 6y ago

There’s a vast difference between selling milk and selling dairy products; milk’s impracticality - shipping water that must be kept under refrigeration and easily spoils - is evident, but cheese, butter, yogurt - none of which discussed in this article - will readily command a premium. I’d have loved to hear about feed additives under development to curb emissions, but the condescension throughout aligns with the general tone of pity for an industry presumed terminal.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

short answer: no. slightly longer answer: not if there are subsidies. i will have to devote more time and attention to a longer proper answer that i feel obligated to provide. i hope to revisit this again once work ebbs.

xupybd 6y ago

Naive question. If cattle eat on grass how can they increase CO2 emissions? I know farming will create some to run the machinery and transport the meant and milk but isn't it a closed loop for the cattle? They eat grass for energy. They use that energy and create CO2. But the grass had to pull the same amount of CO2 out of the air to store that energy right? Is it that the other gases are more harmful or is there something I'm missing?

Turing_Machine 6y ago
That's not a naive question at all, and the answer is that they can't. Cows don't have little nuclear fusion reactors in their rumens, producing carbon from other elements, nor do they eat fossil fuels. Every atom of carbon "emitted" by a cow was taken from the atmosphere by a plant, likely a year ago at most. Now, methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, but it breaks down over time. The cycle can be perfectly "sustainable". Much of the land in the United States that is currently occupied in grazing cattle was formerly inhabited by vast herds of American bison, an animal so genetically similar to domestic cattle that they can actually interbreed, yet the methane emissions from the bison didn't bring on a global climate crisis. Why not?
- RC_ITR 6y ago
  Well for one, there are 2x as many cows in America today than there ever were bison. For 2, we “turn” cows faster by killing them to eat them (rather than letting nature sort it out). So that 2x is then multiplied by some factor For 3, our consumption habits have exported the cow to new environments where bison were not native (like Brazil).
  - Turing_Machine 6y ago
    > Well for one, there are 2x as many cows in America today than there ever were bison. (citation needed) > For 2, we “turn” cows faster by killing them to eat them (rather than letting nature sort it out). So that 2x is then multiplied by some factor Neither the absolute number nor the turnover rate matter. Only the raw amount of biomass. The turnover rate has nothing to do with the fact that essentially all the carbon emitted by the cow was recently removed from the atmosphere by a plant, making the whole process carbon-neutral. > For 3, our consumption habits have exported the cow to new environments where bison were not native (like Brazil). I limited my observation to the United States for a reason, but okay, I'll bite. How does a cow being "in Brazil" change the fact that any carbon it emits was almost certainly removed from the atmosphere by a plant within the last year, making the cow's digestion effectively carbon-neutral?

pochamago 6y ago

Man, let's just invest in societal carbon capture machines already, so we can stop talking about killing off desirable industries

subculture 6y ago

These folksy farmers pretend like they're part of rich heritage of humanity - the dairy farmer through the ages supplying people with a healthy and necessary drink. Dairy production is just another demand created in the modern world by marketers and little to do with actual nutrition [1]. The dairy farmers in this article try to portray a peaceful relationship between farmer and cow, yet 99% of dairy in the US is produced in factory farms quite different from idyllic pastures [2]. More like what we're seeing in China with multi-story pig farms [3]. I think economics, environment and consumer behavior could easily wipe out the dairy industry, except that it's an integral part of food/industrial production. You obvs don't have a cheese industry without dairy, but you also don't have a source of male cows for the veal industry, a source of bones and other parts for the myriad other uses like adhesives, filtration (bone char filtration makes sugar white [4]), chemicals, textiles, etc. [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/4/19/8447883/milk-health-benefit https://www.vox.com/2015/4/19/8447883/milk-health-benefit [2] https://www.livekindly.co/99-animal-products-factory-farms/ https://www.livekindly.co/99-animal-products-factory-farms/ [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/18/a-12-storey-pig-farm-has-china-found-a-way-to-stop-future-pandemics- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/18/a-12-sto... [4] https://www.journalofnaturalmedicine.com/sugar-companies-that-use-bone-char-filters/ https://www.journalofnaturalmedicine.com/sugar-companies-tha...

Simulacra 6y ago

A better question: Can concentrated animal feeding operation's ever be sustainable? It's not just dairy, but the vast majority of the agricultural meat markets.

foopod 6y ago

It blows my mind that we are still doing this. It's not sustainable, it's not ethical, heck, it's not even good for us. It's a pleasure/habit thing. The alternatives have been getting a lot better and a lot more popular too. It won't be long till the dairy industry has to do something drastic [0]. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40274645 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40274645

harimau777 6y ago

The problem that I see with these sorts of articles is that there aren't viable alternatives. If people want us to eat differently then they need to create viable alternatives.

amriksohata 6y ago

Cowspiracy is a great documentary