A question about dairy products?!

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Whether keeping cows in milk and taking away their calves is cruel is a whole other argument. Not milking a lactating cow who doesn't have a calf is cruel and abusive. Careful hand or mechanical milking need not be painful.

Human beings are the only species to consume milk past childhood. We are also the only species to consume the milk of another species. Yet, at about the age of four, most people around the world begin to lose the ability to digest lactose, the carbohydrate found in milk. Lactose intolerance is a reality for 75% of the world's population.

In order to produce milk, a dairy cow must give birth. To maximize their milk supply they are artificially inseminated every year, meaning they are pregnant for a physically demanding 9 months out of every 12. Their calves are traumatically taken from them shortly after birth for slaughter. The resulting surplus of calves feeds the veal industry.

With genetic manipulation and intensive production technologies, cows produce an average of 9,519 kg of milk per year... Seven times more than they would produce naturally. When their milk production wanes after about FOUR years, dairy cows are sent to slaughter where their worn out bodies are ground up into hamburger. Hence a cows natural lifespan is 15 years.

These unnatural conditions make the modern dairy cow highly prone to stress and disease.
The most damaging stress-related disease is mastitis (an inflammation of the udders). It reduces milk yield and directly affects milk quality by altering composition and increasing the somatic cell count (pus).

There are always traces of pus, blood, and a number of chemicals and antibiotics such as penicillin.

Vegan/Raw Vegan.

For a cow to produce milk, it needs to continually have babies. The cow is basically raped, and no not by a bull cow, but with a steel pole. And yes, that hurts. Then her baby is taken away from her, keeping in mind if it is a boy cow, it will automatically be slaughtered. Then she has electric pumps attached to her nipples and yes, that also hurts. Continue doing this repetitively all her life, then yes, that's cruelty.

If you are referring to hand milking, then no it does not hurt. But she still needs to have a baby, and that milk being taken away from her should feed that baby.

Vegan for life

I'm a rancher not a dairyman but modern animal husbandry practices recognize an animals comfort is critical in making a profit.
Modern milking parlors are very comfortable and totally painless.
A cow in pain will not drop or release it's milk even if machine milked.
As to the machine, it's nothing more than a soft latex rubber tube that gently contracts to squeeze the milk from the teat, unlike a human breast pump that uses an uncomfortable vacuum to suck the milk out a nipple.
Compared to the coarse rasping tongue of a calf that eventually causes a cow enough discomfort to make the cow ween the calf, a milking machine is pure heaven to a cow.
The only hormones used in the dairy industry are those naturally occurring ones associated with pregnancy and lactation. Hence if a cows milk production begins to fall she is simply bred to produce a calf and start the milking hormone cycle all over again.

RScott

I imagine that it's like a woman using a breastfeeding pump. I don't know it from experience, but from what I hear a lot of women hate it, it's uncomfortable, and they'd rather be feeding the baby directly.

But if you're getting milked from all of your overgrown and heavy teets three times a day, with a machine and no teet chapstick, I imagine that it's quite uncomfortable and even painful. The cows teets will get chapped and crack and likely bleed if they're chapped enough.

If they are in the lactation cycle (producing milk) and not being milked, than it is very painful for them. Skipping even one milking causes the cow a lot of stress and is very unhealthy for it. To dry off a cow, meaning to force it to stop producing milk has to be done carefully to insure the least amount of pain on it. Their are some people who believe that some or most of the electric milkers can cause damage to the cows teats. as long as the cow is milked the right way it is not painful in the slightest bit. Cows tend to seem like the enjoy being milk, the will line up at the barn and wait for milking time. Clearly most of the people hear do not know what they are talking about, separating the calf has nothing to do with milking bring painful. Just because they ate hooked up to a milker does not mean it is inhumane. I can tell you for sure that as long as the cow is milked the right way it brings no discomfort for her, instead it is the opposite.

When I source my food I think about the best ethics, I think buying cheap you are going into the realms of cheap and intensive farming and as someone experienced with farming I know what that entails. No matter if the British produce is cheap of expensive they all are required and expected to fallow rules of animal care.

I go for the promise that the cows they source to make their product comes from cows that are well looked after like outdoors most of the time, they come from less intensive milk producers (breed of cow that is not selectively bred to produce more) and the calves are used in some way instead of culling them the moment they are born due to the fact that animal rights activists have ruined the veal industry instead of making it better and ethical.

Getting to your question it all depends, the process may not hurt them, it all relates to how they are kept a well looked after cow catering to its needs is a happy cow. When you see them they are waiting at the gate for the farmer to open it and they will walk all the way to the barn on their own and wait to get milked then run back jumping and kicking with excitement back to the field!!

Some people who are against animal use will still say the animals are unhappy and are abused no matter if the look and the action of the animal says otherwise. Some people seem to base their experience and views ON ALL farms that they all must be bad which is not the case. If you want to be ethical then fork out for more expensive produce and read the labels where and how they raise the animals. It is the norm that unethical food is cheap and if you want organic and free range is more expensive!!

Cows are grateful to get their milk taken off them as they do not have a calf at foot to do it for them. In some small local/alternative farms they allow their cows to have a calf at foot and take them off for a couple of hours to milk the mothers!!

Addition: Dairy farming is a difficult industry due to the cheap demand, farms are not big enough either but the UK dairy farmers are in a loosing battle they are faced with very hard choices either grow bigger or bail out. We need every ethical thinking person to encourage the organic and free range market and stop the influence coming from America with massive intensive rearing.

Most farmers look after their cows, they will loose out if a cow is not looked after. So if a cow has problems it will be looked after and they are creams and such they can administer. Any animal will soon tell you if it is uncomfortable by kicking and will not settle to work with!!

Addition: Yes we are the only mammals to drink other animals milk but you have to think about why. We have to source calcium from somewhere and we all are aware what happens when we do not source it. Animals source calcium in other ways too like deer, cows, horses and sheep will source vitamin and minerals from chewing bones and I have noticed the deer ponies I work with eat peat all to get vitamins and minerals. Even people in Siberia and Alaska hunt down certain animals to get calcium from bones of these specific animals as they can not raise cows or other crops!! Humans do plenty of things that other animals do not, it does not make it wrong, its survival!!

-UK-

Farm labourer across Scotland!!

I feel so used and abused.....life as a dairy cow is quite demanding I need a holiday, or earlier retirement.

Sore tats

It is unlikly that milking hurts the cow as long as it is done properly. Having their calves taken away from them must cause distress though.

It can. It all depends on the procedure you use to milk them.

http://www.mixherbs.com

Well, typically no, the cow does not feel pain while being milked in fact it can releive some pain. But, vegans avoid dairy products because these cows are injected with hormones in order to produce lots and lots of milk, and when the cows no longer produce milk, they are usually sent to be slaughtered.

I want to add that milking by hand, the natural way doesnt hurt them but the machines used can hurt, yes.

They have eletric pumps attached to their nipples.
Imagine that. Yes it hurts, it is an inconvenient uncomfortable feeling.
Aso the are injected with hormones to make them keep lactating, because the only time a cow makes milk is when it has just given birth.
So, if you imagine being pumped full of hormones, you might not even be aware that you were feeling ill, you'd just feel ill, or angry or confused etc.

its not the milking thats the problem. dairy cows must be repeatedly forcibly impregnated to produce milk. we then take away the calves so that we can steal their milk. read this article: http://wayfaringvegans.weebly.com/a-sens…