Question about being vegan?!
Answers: I am slightly dumbfounded by the differences between vegetarians and vegans. I can rationalize and understand why someone would be vegetarian. I don't agree with it, but that's my baggage. However, I can understand not wanting to eat/harm animals, etc. However, one of my contacts recently asked about cheese substitutes for making the jump from being a vegetarian to being vegan. So I can assume that a vegan can't eat cheese. Why is this? Cheese is made from animal milk. How is this considered bad or wrong for human consumption? We eat breast milk as infants. To not milk animals actually causes them pain, so it isn't for the benefit of our four legged friends to not use the milk they produce. So what is the reasoning behind this? I'm not looking for attacks or snide comments. I'm trying to expand my understanding of others choices and lifestyles.
Its a fair question. most people do not stop to think where milk comes from or how its obtained so I hope you are open enough to learn from these answers. By your style of questioning, It seems you are.
"To not milk animals causes them pain"
Well, only because we feed them with artificial foods that accelerate thier milk production and then take thier young away from them.
Its a bit like a poisoner offering you an antidote. Perhaps he shouldn't have poisoned you in the first place ?
Here are my other observations on the milk industry:
Artificial incemination every year
Cows would naturally calve every 2-3 years. Dairy farms artificially inceminate them every 11 months. This causes excessive stress on the cows body, increses the chance of prolapse and generally "wears them out" in a few years, rather than a natural 20 years.
Protein enriched feed
The feed they are given is enriched with artificial growth foods. these are generally made with cattle meat protiens.
In the USA and some parts of Australiasia they use a hormone growth agent called recombinant bovine somatotropin. Its brand name is POSILAC? and its made by Monsanto. This increases milk yield and beef growth. This is a synthetic hormone. Its banned in the EU since 1988
The main mechanism these hormones work is by re-directing dietry nutrients from peripheral body tissue to mammary glands. effectively, they are slowly killing the cow.
70% of US cattle are injected with this growth hormone ( 2007 stats ) that the majority of the world will not entertain because they believe its too dangerous.
Bribe/feed caged carousels
These suck. They are large rotating carousels where the cows are caged in a space where they cannot move. They have "black boxes" on thier legs which communicate with the main operating computer. They are fed just the right amount of food depending on how much milk they gave yesterday. They have added growth food if thier production drops
One person can milk about 400 cattle on a carousel so there is no time for checking the animals health - they just milk them dry and kick them out.
killing bulls, excess calves and free martins at 1 week old
All bulls are killed at 1 week old, although some farms iin the UK started ( in 2006 ) shipping them to Continental Europe for veal again. They do not keep any back for breeding as they bring in new blood lines. In the UK we don't use dairy bull calves for veal anymore in country. They are either killed, or shipped out. Bull calves go to make low quality leather products such as cheap sofas.
They kill all free martins as there is a good chance they will be barren.
Strangly, they feed these animals with colostrum at birth to keep them alive, but then kill them a week later.
excess feeding to produce 60 lites of milk per day
The growth food is all designed to produce excess milk. Cows are naturally designed to produce about 15 litres. The european targets for 2009 are set at 90 litres, i don't think it need me to tell you if this is heading the right or wrong direction.
intensive rearing means low husbandry checks
As mentioned above, most automatic dairies have one milkmaid per session, thats it. I know a dairy farm with 1200 cattle and 3 employees. Tell me how they can ever check the cattle....
removing calves from mothers after colostrum feed
This is stressful, cows bawl for weeks for thier young, calling them to be fed. Obviously the calf cannot "run to mom" because its in dog food by now.
killing the cow at 7 years old
Cows can naturally live to 20 years old. Production dairy cows are killed after 4-6 births so are never kept after 7 years old.
Hope that helps.
The way they treat the cows,goats etc in dairy farms is inhumane and torturous. Most of the time it is very cruel, and harmful to the enviroment. They do have soy cheese that tastes just like the real thing. I've found plenty of alternatives.
Hi there,
I'm went from veg to vegan. At first I wasn't quite sure why dairy was so bad. But after some research I found out some quite disturbing information. If you must drink milk try buying free range milk. It's a more humane alternative. Here are some of the ethical issues I discovered regarding dairy.
Drinking milk does contruibute to unnessary death and suffering. Just like humans cows only lactate a few months after birth. For cows to produce a constant supply of milk they must be continually artificially ensiminated and give birth. Their babies are taken away from them soon after they are born. If they are male they will be trapped in veal crates, fed an anemic diet and confined in darkness and eventually killed. If they are female they will go on to also be dairy cows (or more correctly milk machines). This seperation causes distress to both mother and calf. Drinking milk supports the veal industry. Cows are also pumped with hormones and antibiotics to increase milk production. This often leads to mastitius, a painful infection of the udders. Constant milk production leaches calcium from cow's bones leaving them eventually lame or crippled.
If you really can't live without dairy try buying from certified free range dairy farmers. But everyone has to make their own decion in the end.
There are also a whole range of environmental issues. That are too long to list here. I'm doing an environmental report on the environmental impact of intensive dairy farming. So if your interested feel free to email me.
Cheers,
Hala.
Yes, to not milk animals causes them pain. But the milk they produce is for THEIR children, so as human breast milk is for ours. And cow milk protein molecules are too big for human body's digestion. That's why you gain weight so fast without saturating calcium and protein needs. The nutrients are just being dumped in the body. Plant protein on the other hand can be digested very easily and is available in a variety of greens. Spirulina has 200 times more protein than beef for example. Broccoli, soy, nuts are also very good sources of protein.
That's the medical reason for going vegan.
Besides the sick cruelty against the animals, the environment and even world peace does not prosper because of meat consumption. Life stock production uses immense amounts of energy, water and land resources with an extremly marginal nutritianal revenue. Land scarcity in third world countries is the consequence. Nations in tropical regions (Central and South America, Africa and many countries in Asia) are not starving because their land isn't yielding any food, but because they sell their land to utilize the first world grain and soy needs to feed cattle, poultry etc. That is called ghost fields in economics.
Even the United Nation recognize the problem in their report on life stock and the environemnt.
It is time to think about your eating habits with India and China on the westernized path. Was it 20lbs meat per capita in China 20 years, it is now 50. If you count the 2.5 billion Indians and Chinese together with an meat demand like North America and Europe, there will be serious issues.
But for the average American, sticking to your recommended doctor's diet would make an important impact to society. Reducing animal products to the FDA's recommended amount, would reduce pollution and land usage by half.
All kinds of self generated health problems originate solely in animal product consumption. e.g. heart attack - you name it
It's almost nicer to eat meat than cheese. I'd rather be fattened up and murdered at 4 months old than tortured and enslaved for years, then murdered.
Dairy isn't all it's hyped up to be by the industry, either. Humans are able to thrive on many different types of food, but some are more naturally derived than others.
When you think about ALL the milk and cheese in supermarkets and restaurants, and gas stations, and theaters, and homes, etc, it's easy to see what a HUGE tragedy this is for the animals. We can't see them because they're packed in tightly behind closed doors. This is true for the vast majority meat as well as eggs and dairy sources.
That alone is a good reason to be vegan. It's also better for the environment (in general, there are exceptions), saves water, and it's healthier (in general) to be vegan. :-)
Plus- I just had to add this- Milk has pus in it! Yuckie!
The machines they are connected to are painful, and cause bruising and scabbing which causes infection and then look what you have in your milk.. pus.
Veganism is about avoiding animal exploitation. They make their own products for their own reasons. Bees make honey for themselves. Cows don't just produce milk for the hell of it. They produce milk after they have a baby just like humans, which are then taken away and if they're female thrown back into dairy production, if they're male, thrown into veal crates so you can have their milk. To say something as ignorant and naive as "to not milk animals causes them pain" clearly says you haven't put any thought into how ridiculous that sounds. I don't know anyone who says we have to milk lactating women so as to reduce their suffering. Supply and demand. When you put the demand on, the supply will come. If we weren't artificially inseminating them to impregnate them to get them to lactate we wouldn't have to worry about this so-called pain relief we're giving them by milking them, now would we?
Vegans and strict vegetarians are what I would call CONSISTENT, as opposed to lacto-ovo vegetarians who claim to be against animal cruelty yet support the factory farming egg and dairy industries which are crueler than the straight-to-meat industries ever could be. And the egg and dairy animals end up slaughtered the same way anyway.
Everyone else basically said it;
Vegans=good.
Milk=bad
>:/
My understanding that making cheese for mainstream consumption reduces it to any other commodity, to be produced as quickly and as cheaply as possible, and if it harms an animal in the process it's worthy collateral.
Just a stab in the dark. The boy seems to feel that animal byproducts causes his digestive system distress - truth to that, I don't know, but there it is. Cheers :-D
In order for a cow to produce milk, she must have a calf. In order for the milk to be obtained for human consumption, like production of cheese, the calf must be taken away, usually within 24-48 hrs. This is what vegans object to, as it causes great distress to both mother and calf, and also produce the veal calf.
Not milking the animal then would cause pain but it is humans who have manipulated the cow to produce more milk than she would naturally - if she hadn't had a calf there would be no milk.
Yes, infant humans will drink human milk, just as naturally as infant cows drink cows milk. No other species drinks the milk of a different species - it is unnatural and besides it's not that good for you anyway! Contrary to what the dairy industry would have u believe, there's barely any calcium in milk and it's full of bovine hormones and pus.
Yes, we consume breast milk as infants, but eventually, we stop. Mammals produce milk when they are pregnant to feed their young, but at some point, the milk train is cut off, and the offspring have to learn to eat food. It's called weaning.
Cows are no different--they produce milk to feed their young. However, as others have pointed out, cows are artificially inseminated, fed hormones to increase milk production, and antibiotics to treat infections caused my constant milking. You know how any pharmaceutical commercial will suggest women who are pregnant or nursing not take a certain drug? That's because they wind up in the milk. And it's no different for cows fed these drugs. The stuff winds up in the milk YOU drink.
Hours after giving birth, the cow and calf are separated As others have pointed out, the females eventually become dairy cows, while the males are shipped off to the veal crates. It is this dairy-veal connection that made me stop eating dairy. And when a cow's production declines, she is killed--typically for hamburger. It is dairy cows who are the prime infection point for bovine spongiform encephalopahty, also known as Mad Cow.
We'd do our four-legged friends a bigger service not impregnating them in the first place and keeping them in feedlots.
Besides, you wouldn't drink the milk of a cat or a dog, would you? Then why drink the milk of a cow?