Hi yall. I have a genuine question on how people living the vegan lifestyle view their own morals and how they correlate to realism in the world. Im not a vegan or vegetarian, i eat meat minimalisticly. But thats for health reasons as i agree that people have adopted a over heavily protien diet. I grew up on a dairy farm that was for milk/meat production. I hear that animal activist and vegan view these as absolutely cruel. While i admit it is not a naturalistic for animals to live that way, todays cows are not natural animals. They need to be milked or they get milk fever and die from this. I have taken calves away from the mother usally a few hours after birth, but ive also let calves stay with there mother for days and everysingle time the calf has died of starvation, and the mother cow gets milk fever as no milk is leaving her system. I really did not plan on this. I believed that they would be fine. Ive fed calves 3 quarts of milk twice a day, any more and the calf gets sick from scours. A first time producing mother cow will produce anywhere from 10 to 20 quarts of milk twice a day!! Much more then its calf would require. Turning into mother cow getting milk fever and dying, and the calf getting scours. Then dying. This is why they are no longer natural animals, but selective bred to a point they cannot exist without the dairy industry. While i do not believe this is "nice" in anyway possible, what i think and what it is are two completely different things. I do think a vegan lifestyle is better, but i feel it is morally wrong, cause that would require all dairy animals to be killed/die as there would not be a need for them and they cannot survive on their own. What are your thoughts on this
US Whats morally wrong
- Thread starter Treggils
- Start date
Lou
Forum Legend
Your argument is one that most vegans have had to argue against many times. And over time I have seen a lot of good counter-arguments. In fact, stay tuned and I think we are about to see a bunch of good ones.
Personally I prefer the more abstract purely ethical stance but since your background info was mostly based on commonly used dairy production practices - I think I'll start there.
Dairy cows are bred to be killed. it is very rare that a dairy cow dies of old age. In fact, a dairy cow has the potential to live to be 10 or 20 years old. But most cows are slaughtered when they are 3 - 5 years old.
I'm pretty sure that the world will not go vegan overnight. Here in the US, the percentage of vegans is less than 5%. Lets say next year it doubles to 10% or maybe the demand for milk decreases by 10%. Even if each year the number of vegans double (or milk demand decreases by halves), it would still take about 5 years for the demand for milk approaches zero.
Now every dairy cow is bred on purpose. And if a farmer can't sell his milk he won't breed as many cows. Every time he has a surplus of milk he will either kill the oldest cows and/or breed less cows (probably a combination of the two). So about the time demand reaches zero there will be very few cows left. The decreasing demand for milk will not kill one cow that wouldn't have been killed within a year or two anyway.
As you pointed out, the modern cow is not natural. So if the modern cow goes extinct - it will not affect the ecosystem in any kind of negative way. Also, very few modern dairy cows eat grass. Most dairy cows eat "feed". and most of the cropland that is used for dairy cows can be easily converted to provide crops for people. Most of the studies I've seen claim that we will actually have more food if we didn't feed crops to cows.
Now as a rebuttal you will say, well, some land is not suitable for crops. but it is just suitable for grazing. But rangeland is mostly used for beef cattle. Dairy cows need to be close to the barn. and yes some organic dairy farms do keep cows on pasture. I think that accounts for a few percent of milk production in the US.
BTW, if beef cattle weren't sent to the feedlot and spent their whole life on the range - beef production would be only a small fraction of what it is today.
So less cruelty, more food. Win-Win!
Personally I prefer the more abstract purely ethical stance but since your background info was mostly based on commonly used dairy production practices - I think I'll start there.
Dairy cows are bred to be killed. it is very rare that a dairy cow dies of old age. In fact, a dairy cow has the potential to live to be 10 or 20 years old. But most cows are slaughtered when they are 3 - 5 years old.
I'm pretty sure that the world will not go vegan overnight. Here in the US, the percentage of vegans is less than 5%. Lets say next year it doubles to 10% or maybe the demand for milk decreases by 10%. Even if each year the number of vegans double (or milk demand decreases by halves), it would still take about 5 years for the demand for milk approaches zero.
Now every dairy cow is bred on purpose. And if a farmer can't sell his milk he won't breed as many cows. Every time he has a surplus of milk he will either kill the oldest cows and/or breed less cows (probably a combination of the two). So about the time demand reaches zero there will be very few cows left. The decreasing demand for milk will not kill one cow that wouldn't have been killed within a year or two anyway.
As you pointed out, the modern cow is not natural. So if the modern cow goes extinct - it will not affect the ecosystem in any kind of negative way. Also, very few modern dairy cows eat grass. Most dairy cows eat "feed". and most of the cropland that is used for dairy cows can be easily converted to provide crops for people. Most of the studies I've seen claim that we will actually have more food if we didn't feed crops to cows.
Now as a rebuttal you will say, well, some land is not suitable for crops. but it is just suitable for grazing. But rangeland is mostly used for beef cattle. Dairy cows need to be close to the barn. and yes some organic dairy farms do keep cows on pasture. I think that accounts for a few percent of milk production in the US.
BTW, if beef cattle weren't sent to the feedlot and spent their whole life on the range - beef production would be only a small fraction of what it is today.
So less cruelty, more food. Win-Win!
I feel you've pretty much answered your own question here.
Cows are bred. Stop breeding them.
I see nothing moral about enslaving and breeding anyone.
Dairy cows usually are killed when they no longer produce milk. The ethical way would be to allow the existing cows to live out their lives and stop dairy production.
What you've highlighted is exactly WHY the dairy industry is immoral
Luis Halson
Forum Practitioner
I believe that it is unethical to slaughter animals just for meat, especially when it is unnecessary. I am not vegan or vegetarian (my parents won't let me go veggie, but I am still discussing that with them). Vegans also believe that animals are treated badly in many farms e.g. calves are separated from mothers after birth in dairy, male chicks are shredded alive in the egg industry. Some also believe that the lower status of animals as property is unethical (e.g. no pets, go vegan)
If you took a single human girl and treated her according to standard dairy industry practices by the end of her short miserable life you would be guilty of kidnapping, rape, torture, infanticide, murder and cannibalism. Now maybe we disagree on the moral difference between cows and humans, but we ought to agree that what would be the worst imaginable things to do to one isn't okay to do to billions of the other. And for no better reason than people having a taste in their mouths for a few minutes a day.
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My very simple mental analysis on this is ... would I want something that is done to animals to be done to me or my family?
No? Then I try to avoid it.
And if there are reasonable things I can do to avoid it (e.g. eat tofu/veggie burgers and drink almond milk instead), then I do them.
If you think closely about it, you will likely also arrive at the point that you would likely not want that your mother would have been made pregnant continuously, to have her children taken away from her, and that those kids (including you) would be killed and processed as meat if they were male or inducted into the rape/birth/milking cycle if they are female.
Veganismo
Forum Novice
Right on. I would only add that they are killed not when they no longer produce milk, but when their milk production is no longer at its maximum. If they can be replaced by a cow that produces one drop more milk they will be killed. From what I can tell milk production slows at around age 4 and they are on borrowed time at that point. I guess in human years this would be around age 18 or 19?
I wasn't entirely sure whether to contribute to this thread as the OP only seems to have joined in order to potentially stir up a debate, and has not come back to respond or discuss further. However, I thought it worth mentioning that milk production whilst wrong in my view, can be less cruel, and it is certainly not true to say that a calf will die if left with its mother. If this has happened then the OP was definitely doing something wrong. If interested check out the website for The Calf at Foot Dairy. There are more and more dairies like this springing up in the UK and no doubt elsewhere too. For anyone who wants to continue drinking milk it has to be the least worst option.
THECALFATFOOTDAIRY
Pioneering highly ethical micro-dairy producing milk with compassion! Raw milk from purely pasture fed Jersey cows who are allowed to keep their own calves until their natural weaning age. Endeavouring to make the world a better place for dairy cows.
www.the-calf-at-foot-dairy.co.uk
There are no retirement homes for old cows. They all get slaughtered. Every cow that is living in the dairy industry right now will be slaughtered at some point far before the end of her natural life. If we stopped consuming dairy right this moment, it's likely that all the cows would be killed/die. But if we keep consuming dairy, more and more cows will be born in to the awful fate that comes with being a dairy cow - rape, drugs, severe confinement, no chance to raise babies and merciless slaughter while still young. Consuming dairy is clearly morally wrong.
Luis Halson
Forum Practitioner
Animals are slaughtered in all meat production systems. Male chicks and unproductive hens are killed in egg production. Male calves and unproductive cows are killed in milk production. Take a look at my vegan calculator spreadsheet - it calculates how many animals you would kill if you don't go vegan.
