4 ms·

Cows are suffering on even the most “humane” dairy farms

26 points by divbzero 2y ago

toomuchtodo 2y ago
https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2019posts/cows-milk-human-health.html https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2019posts/cows-milk-human-heal... ("We can get all of the nutrients for optimal health from a high-quality diet that limits or contains no dairy.") https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/dining/milk-dairy-industry-gen-z.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/dining/milk-dairy-industr... | https://archive.today/RHkvs https://archive.today/RHkvs ("Big Dairy Is Trying to Get Gen-Z to Drink More Milk") https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-11/milk-oversupply-has-us-farmers-in-the-midwest-dumping-it-in-the-sewer https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-11/milk-over... | https://archive.today/LY5uY https://archive.today/LY5uY ("There’s So Much Milk That US Farmers Are Dumping It in the Sewer") https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/news/2023/03/30/state-considers--5-5-million-bailout-for-maine-dairy-farms https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/news/2023/03/30/state... ("Portland Press Herald: State considers $5.5 million bailout for Maine dairy industry") (My note: "The heritage industry is approaching the point of no return, they warn. If it shrinks much more, the industry won't be able to support the network of fertilizer, feed and farm equipment suppliers and truck drivers needed to sustain any dairy operation.") https://www.google.com/search?q=generational+shift+away+from+dairy https://www.google.com/search?q=generational+shift+away+from... https://www.google.com/search?q=dairy+farm+closures+us https://www.google.com/search?q=dairy+farm+closures+us (TLDR Farms will keep closing, demand will drop as generational turnover continues, unnecessary supply greatly exceeds demand and go forward demand trajectory)
xenospn 2y ago
I grew up on a small farm, and we had dairy cows, beef cattle and chickens. I will never touch another animal based product until I die.
- steve_adams_86 2y ago
  Likewise. If anything matters in this world, I think the wellbeing of sentient creatures is a good candidate for the top of the list. I cause enough suffering inadvertently, let alone by intentionally supporting this kind of industry. I found it easy to stop once that clicked. A moment of pleasure can’t justify the immense suffering that made it possible.
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  Yeah, I work on a cute idyllic farm town with free range animals and despite all this feel-good stuff, I’ve seen chickens living in horrible conditions and baby cows I know will be separated from their mothers. The way I look at it, it’s an issue of consent. The animals can’t consent to how they’re being treated, so we shouldn’t do it. At least not in developed nations where we have so many alternatives. The idea that “free range” means it’s okay to corral these animals at will and kill them well before their natural lives just doesn’t fit for me. Meanwhile, lentils and soybeans are amazing!
- biotinker 2y ago
  It's not possible to raise ethical beef at sufficient scale for a median piece of beef to be ethical, but it's absolutely possible to do so with chickens. It may be more profitable to raise chickens in inhumane conditions, but it is not necessary to do so to supply the US with the quantity of chickens and eggs it consumes. Anyone with an acre of land (i.e. most Americans that don't live in cities) has enough space to raise enough chickens to fully feed their family on eggs, or meat if they so chose. Whether their HOAs or municipalities allow them to do so is another matter. Chickens are very easy to raise for eggs. We have a dozen chickens who have really excellent lives, and we are overflowing with more eggs than we can eat.
moomoo11 2y ago
No shit. Go vegan.
bevacqua 2y ago
https://archive.is/J6mDZ https://archive.is/J6mDZ
johnea 2y ago
It's really sad what people are willing to do to other animals 8-( I think the most hypocritical example are pets, especially dogs, which are kidnapped off their suckling mother's tit, to be handed to a human for imprinting. To the extent that catts, and other pet animals, are manufactured for consumption, the same applies to them. People will claim these animals are "a part of their family", and that the dogs have more empathy to their problems than other people do, but still feel OK with them being stolen away from their actual families. Go figure...
- steve_adams_86 2y ago
  I don’t think most dogs are taken from their mothers in ethical breeding settings. There’s quite a large buffer for puppies to grow and be separate from depending on their moms. The key is socializing them with humans in general, not imprinting them with a single human. Dogs seem to genuinely love being taken into human families when there’s sufficient attention, activity, and love. I can see issues from a naturalism perspective, but I don’t personally agree with that. If the dogs are experiencing good lives and exceptional wellbeing, it seems acceptable to me. I don’t agree with animal exploitation at all. I don’t eat meat or dairy. I think ethical pet keeping is possible, though. In my aquarium hobby I meet people who take better care of their fish than they do of themselves. It seems to me that there are caring humans with happy animals in their lives.
xnx 2y ago
I appreciate that cows are a clever hack for humans to get calories from grass, but they're definitely unnecessary in the developed world. The only creature that needs a cow's milk is a baby cow.
- snapplebobapple 2y ago
  Necessity is pretty irrelevant. If we are going to argue on mecessity then i would like to point out vegans amd vegetarians are also unecessary. We should lock them up and feed them a carnivore diet until they regain their senses and can be trusted to stop genociding insects, birds, reptiles and small to medium sized animals with their mechanized farm death machines.
  - xnx 2y ago
    More crops are grown to feed animals than people.
    - snapplebobapple 2y ago
      You're right, I should have said "grass fed, grass finished carnivore diet"
      - timeon 2y ago
        So what is your point? To produce meat you need to kill much more of the ecosystem than for vegetable option + eventually killing those animals.
        seba_dos1 2y ago
        You don't need a point when you're clearly trolling.
        snapplebobapple 2y ago
        The point is the first comment is stupid and therefore only deserves ridicule. That anyone thinks their view of necessity has any relevance to any argument in a free market is absurd. The whole point of a free market is that any one person is too dumb to decide any of this stuff for the group and instead we let many people offer what they think is best and let the repeated game of the market allocate resources to people that provide what is actually wanted. The commenter is reading an article on the failure of regulation (regulating organic in such a way that as soon as any non approved treatment is used the animal cannot produce organic milk anymore, dropping the value of the cows output to a small fraction of what it was and heavily incentivizing waiting and seeing rather than minimizing harm through effective and early treatment) into a claim they know none of us should have meat when they are clearly unqualified to make that claim because they can't even read the article posted and see the regulatory failure, they just see more justification for their harebrained anti meat agenda. Also, your last statement is not true, if you spend the time to find a good farmer. The cows I have eaten for the last ten years have been raised in the Joel salatin style, regenerating the degraded prairie the farm bought for cheap, harming very few insects,small mammals, birds, etc (in reality they are building a space that supports a much higher population of all of those), likely sequestering more carbon in the soil than they emit all for not much more than the factory farmed crap you buy at the big box store. One cow lasts almost a year for me. Contrast that with all the insects killed by pesticides, all the small animals and birds killed by farm equipment, etc. that goes into raising grains, vegetables and fruits to feed an equivalent amount of people over time. Vegans/vegetarians are mass murderers in comparison if you value more than the fuzzy large mammals and instead take a whole earth view.

26 points by divbzero 2y ago

https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2019posts/cows-milk-human-health.html https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2019posts/cows-milk-human-heal... ("We can get all of the nutrients for optimal health from a high-quality diet that limits or contains no dairy.") https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/dining/milk-dairy-industry-gen-z.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/dining/milk-dairy-industr... | https://archive.today/RHkvs https://archive.today/RHkvs ("Big Dairy Is Trying to Get Gen-Z to Drink More Milk") https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-11/milk-oversupply-has-us-farmers-in-the-midwest-dumping-it-in-the-sewer https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-11/milk-over... | https://archive.today/LY5uY https://archive.today/LY5uY ("There’s So Much Milk That US Farmers Are Dumping It in the Sewer") https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/news/2023/03/30/state-considers--5-5-million-bailout-for-maine-dairy-farms https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/news/2023/03/30/state... ("Portland Press Herald: State considers $5.5 million bailout for Maine dairy industry") (My note: "The heritage industry is approaching the point of no return, they warn. If it shrinks much more, the industry won't be able to support the network of fertilizer, feed and farm equipment suppliers and truck drivers needed to sustain any dairy operation.") https://www.google.com/search?q=generational+shift+away+from+dairy https://www.google.com/search?q=generational+shift+away+from... https://www.google.com/search?q=dairy+farm+closures+us https://www.google.com/search?q=dairy+farm+closures+us (TLDR Farms will keep closing, demand will drop as generational turnover continues, unnecessary supply greatly exceeds demand and go forward demand trajectory)

xenospn 2y ago

I grew up on a small farm, and we had dairy cows, beef cattle and chickens. I will never touch another animal based product until I die.

steve_adams_86 2y ago
Likewise. If anything matters in this world, I think the wellbeing of sentient creatures is a good candidate for the top of the list. I cause enough suffering inadvertently, let alone by intentionally supporting this kind of industry. I found it easy to stop once that clicked. A moment of pleasure can’t justify the immense suffering that made it possible.
TaylorAlexander 2y ago
Yeah, I work on a cute idyllic farm town with free range animals and despite all this feel-good stuff, I’ve seen chickens living in horrible conditions and baby cows I know will be separated from their mothers. The way I look at it, it’s an issue of consent. The animals can’t consent to how they’re being treated, so we shouldn’t do it. At least not in developed nations where we have so many alternatives. The idea that “free range” means it’s okay to corral these animals at will and kill them well before their natural lives just doesn’t fit for me. Meanwhile, lentils and soybeans are amazing!
biotinker 2y ago
It's not possible to raise ethical beef at sufficient scale for a median piece of beef to be ethical, but it's absolutely possible to do so with chickens. It may be more profitable to raise chickens in inhumane conditions, but it is not necessary to do so to supply the US with the quantity of chickens and eggs it consumes. Anyone with an acre of land (i.e. most Americans that don't live in cities) has enough space to raise enough chickens to fully feed their family on eggs, or meat if they so chose. Whether their HOAs or municipalities allow them to do so is another matter. Chickens are very easy to raise for eggs. We have a dozen chickens who have really excellent lives, and we are overflowing with more eggs than we can eat.

moomoo11 2y ago

No shit. Go vegan.

bevacqua 2y ago

https://archive.is/J6mDZ https://archive.is/J6mDZ

johnea 2y ago

It's really sad what people are willing to do to other animals 8-( I think the most hypocritical example are pets, especially dogs, which are kidnapped off their suckling mother's tit, to be handed to a human for imprinting. To the extent that catts, and other pet animals, are manufactured for consumption, the same applies to them. People will claim these animals are "a part of their family", and that the dogs have more empathy to their problems than other people do, but still feel OK with them being stolen away from their actual families. Go figure...

steve_adams_86 2y ago
I don’t think most dogs are taken from their mothers in ethical breeding settings. There’s quite a large buffer for puppies to grow and be separate from depending on their moms. The key is socializing them with humans in general, not imprinting them with a single human. Dogs seem to genuinely love being taken into human families when there’s sufficient attention, activity, and love. I can see issues from a naturalism perspective, but I don’t personally agree with that. If the dogs are experiencing good lives and exceptional wellbeing, it seems acceptable to me. I don’t agree with animal exploitation at all. I don’t eat meat or dairy. I think ethical pet keeping is possible, though. In my aquarium hobby I meet people who take better care of their fish than they do of themselves. It seems to me that there are caring humans with happy animals in their lives.

xnx 2y ago

I appreciate that cows are a clever hack for humans to get calories from grass, but they're definitely unnecessary in the developed world. The only creature that needs a cow's milk is a baby cow.

snapplebobapple 2y ago
Necessity is pretty irrelevant. If we are going to argue on mecessity then i would like to point out vegans amd vegetarians are also unecessary. We should lock them up and feed them a carnivore diet until they regain their senses and can be trusted to stop genociding insects, birds, reptiles and small to medium sized animals with their mechanized farm death machines.
- xnx 2y ago
  More crops are grown to feed animals than people.
  - snapplebobapple 2y ago
    You're right, I should have said "grass fed, grass finished carnivore diet"
    - timeon 2y ago
      So what is your point? To produce meat you need to kill much more of the ecosystem than for vegetable option + eventually killing those animals.
      - seba_dos1 2y ago
        You don't need a point when you're clearly trolling.
      - snapplebobapple 2y ago
        The point is the first comment is stupid and therefore only deserves ridicule. That anyone thinks their view of necessity has any relevance to any argument in a free market is absurd. The whole point of a free market is that any one person is too dumb to decide any of this stuff for the group and instead we let many people offer what they think is best and let the repeated game of the market allocate resources to people that provide what is actually wanted. The commenter is reading an article on the failure of regulation (regulating organic in such a way that as soon as any non approved treatment is used the animal cannot produce organic milk anymore, dropping the value of the cows output to a small fraction of what it was and heavily incentivizing waiting and seeing rather than minimizing harm through effective and early treatment) into a claim they know none of us should have meat when they are clearly unqualified to make that claim because they can't even read the article posted and see the regulatory failure, they just see more justification for their harebrained anti meat agenda. Also, your last statement is not true, if you spend the time to find a good farmer. The cows I have eaten for the last ten years have been raised in the Joel salatin style, regenerating the degraded prairie the farm bought for cheap, harming very few insects,small mammals, birds, etc (in reality they are building a space that supports a much higher population of all of those), likely sequestering more carbon in the soil than they emit all for not much more than the factory farmed crap you buy at the big box store. One cow lasts almost a year for me. Contrast that with all the insects killed by pesticides, all the small animals and birds killed by farm equipment, etc. that goes into raising grains, vegetables and fruits to feed an equivalent amount of people over time. Vegans/vegetarians are mass murderers in comparison if you value more than the fuzzy large mammals and instead take a whole earth view.