The Cruelty of Milk Production

As with all mammals, cows produce milk for their babies. To ensure the highest milk yield possible, U.S. factory farmers artificially inseminate dairy cows every year and keep them pumped full of steroids and other hormones.

After giving birth, the mothers are hooked up to machines two or three times a day that take the very milk intended for their calves. After two months, the mothers are once again impregnated and then milked for seven months of their nine-month pregnancies. The physically taxing cycle of impregnation, birthing, and mechanized milking forces the average dairy cow to be “spent” by her fifth birthday. If allowed to live naturally, cows can live to be 25.

One byproduct of the dairy industry is a calf per year per cow. A calf’s fate depends on his or her gender: If female, she will likely join her mother on the dairy line. If male, he will be sold to beef or veal farmers, often before he is a week old.

The veal industry is thus a direct byproduct of the dairy industry. Virtually every calf slaughtered for veal is the child of a cow on the dairy line. Most of these calves spend their entire lives chained alone inside wooden crates too small for them to even turn around. To produce the tenderest meat, the crates are purposefully designed to prevent movement and cause muscle atrophy. The urine-soaked wood-slat flooring causes many calves to suffer from chronic pneumonia and other respiratory problems, so veal farmers dose them with antibiotics. And, while their mothers’ milk is being stolen on dairy farms, these calves are fed an iron-deficient milk substitute that keeps them anemic and pales the color of their flesh. After roughly 16 weeks of lonely intensive confinement, without being nursed by their mothers or feeling grass beneath their feet, the calves are slaughtered.