Good that there are farmers like your family. By no means did I want to point to any individual's family, and certainly didn't say that this is the only way. F

Good that there are farmers like your family. By no means did I want to point to any individual's family, and certainly didn't say that this is the only way. For the rest, unfortunately, as any mammal, cows only start producing milk when they become pregnant, and then stop later. Since feeding and raising the calves are more expensive than selling them for their meat, they rather do that on bigger / profit optimized farms. This procedure is hard to be thought of ethical. Other farms also keep a breed that was already "genetically engineered" to simply produce more milk (called diary cows/diary cattle). Probably less extreme, ethically still challengable. I live in Switzerland and this is one of the hot topics w.r.t. animal exploitation / sustainable farming and food production. So next time you find yourself in the unlucky situation you have to eat someone other's / mass produced diary product, you might want to take this into consideration. Solution? Not yet, to my knowledge. Systematic problems would need systematic solution.