How to explain "no milk"?

[mysh]

I wonder at times how to explain to an omni or a lacto-vegetarian what's so bad about consuming dairy. I understand the health aspects, but I want to go beyond that - I want to engender an understanding of why it would be wrong even if cow's milk were the healthiest thing in the world for humans to consume.

I also know all the arguments regarding how they are treated in the factory farms, but then I always get the story of "when I was young, I lived on/near/within 1000 miles of a farm, and the cows were all well treated, their calves weren't taken away, and they would be in pain if they weren't milked" (the latter is, of course, a whole other discussion). So I am left wondering, if all dairy farming went back to the way it used to be, and in fact still is in the Swiss Alps, for example, what is wrong with it? I understand the intrinsic wrongness, I just seem to have difficulties explaining them to other (seemingly) reasonable people.

So here are the arguments I have (though they all seem quite ineffective when talking to your average dairy consumer):


Cow's milk is for calves.
You are stealing that milk from the cow.
Keeping cows for their milk and taking it from them against their will is, technically, no different than slavery, and hence just as despicable.

The first two are not very likely to convince someone who's willing to kill both the cow and the calf anyway, and the last one normally just draws shocked expressions in a "how dare you compare the two!" kind of way.

Does anyone have any other arguments that might make sense to the prion-addled brain of an omni?

[vegetous]

You could try grossing them out by telling them about the puss and blood that is in milk.
- Matt

[mysh]

eh - that doesn't work for me. Despite their (obviously) limited mental capacities, I still like to treat them as adults.

[Kiva Dancer]

I'm pretty useless here. All I know are health reasons why humans shouldn't drink milk.

Sorry.

[Seaside]

At some point in every mammal's life they've got to stop hanging onto the mother's teat and grow up. Maybe you should ask them if they know what it means to be WEANED!!! Familiarize yourself with the psychological problems that are associated with children who refuse to be weaned, and discuss this with them. There are no animals except us who cannot face being turned away from the breast and tossed out to fend for themselves. Ask them if they've heard of any adult animal besides us that goes straight from its mother's milk to that of another species when its mother has dried up. Just because someone else is doing all the work doesn't mean that people who drink animal milk aren't symbolically sucking the teats themselves. Just tell them its about time they grew up and got themselves weaned! :D

[snivelingchild]

Well, if all farms returned to traditional methods of farming, tem cows would produce just the right amount of milk for their calf. This would make taking any of it letting a calf go hungry, unless you replaced it with milk replacers which are very unhealthy for them and this would make you be putting your own "needs" before their real ones. Also, (pretending that veal doesn't exist) talk about what would happen to the male cows that are born (since milk breeds are completely different from meat breeds) and the dairy cows after they produce milk. I also tend to find that a better way of putting that third point is to refer to it as blatant exploitation of a creature that cannot defend themself, and avoid using the term slavery. Another point is that dairy cows must be impregnated every year to give milk, which is more than normal and natural and is far worse for their health than letting them live their lives naturally, plus, since milk requires adding more life, that is just exponentially expanding the resources required for milk-yielding, thus making the environmental impact even greater thn just keeping the cows themselves.

And has anyone actually ever told you that BOTH the calves weren't taken away and that they would be in pain if not milked, because how would they not be milked if their calves were there?

[Imapeach]

Ask them if they would drink the milk of a rat? Or a horse? How bout a pig or a cat?

My sister was telling me about a story she heard on the news about how a litter of kittens had been mothered by a female dog, drinking her milk to survive and whatnot. My 8 year old neice piped up "Eeewwwww!!! That's so gross!" But how is that any different to what humans do? Really, it's not even a matter of survival for us!

I think on some level most people know it's utterly ridiculous. I recall thinking how strange it was when i was still omni or ovo-lacto. It's just habit really.

[sophia]

oops!!

[sophia]

[QUOTE=Imapeach]Ask them if they would drink the milk of a rat? Or a horse? How bout a pig or a cat?

I know what you mean. Everyone is so obsessed with milk.. calcium, etc. They forget it is from another species.That is so biologicallly incorrect, no wonder there are so many allergies. Calfes and cows have four stomachs, we have one. What the hell are we doing drinking it? Who thought of it.
I used to work with a lady who brestfed her daughter till she was five. Everyone thought that was gross and wrong. I personally think drinking another species milk is distgusting, and told them and they were like oh yeah when you think of it like that. Do these people ever think?

[mysh]

Seaside - that is an excellent suggestion!

Sniveling Child - You make some good points there. The problem is in discussing this with my mother (as the worst example), who used to go into the Swiss Alps in her childhood and hang around the milk farms. They let the cows go out into the fields, with their calves, and the farmer comes out and milks the cows of their "excess" milk. As anyone who has ever breastfed knows, you produce as much milk as is needed, so if you have to feed two babies you'll be producing more than if you only had to feed one, and as you wean your child(ren), you start to produce less. So, in fact, the cow can easily produce more than just one calf needs, meaning you are no longer stealing anything from the calf. Oh, and these calves in the Alps (for the most part) don't get taken away for veal, but get to grow up in their herd, until they're either the ones producing the milk, or mating with the milk producers to make new calves. In other words, if they were sentient and able to consent to the excess milk being taken (as some human mothers do to help feed babies whose own mother cannot produce any or enough milk), there would be nothing ethically wrong with it (though it would still be nutritionally inappropriate).

So that's the scenario where the only remaining argument is the exploitation. The problem there is that we as a society have become so used to people being exploited in the workplace that some small amount of exploiting animals seems negligible. (And you're right, describing it as "exploitation" rather than equating it to slavery would be easier to swallow).

Cows also don't have to be impregnated every year to continue giving milk - just like human mothers can breastfeed as long as the child needs it (as long as the hormones are right). In some places the grandmother of a baby will help breast-feed the baby, so even without having been pregnant, she can still produce the milk, simply through hormonal stimulation caused by being close to the breastfeeding mother and being needed.

As I mentioned before, the "cows being in pain if not milked" thing is a whole other discussion. That's a very true statement - of the dairy cows in modern-day factory farms. They are bred to produce truly excessive amounts of milk, and are given other chemicals to stimulate the milk production, so I have no difficulties at all believing that it must be agonising for them to carry around a lot more milk than nature ever intended for them to carry. The solution to that problem, however, is NOT milking them, but rather not breeding them that way and not pumping them full of chemicals. Then the problem would fix itself in a few generations, at most.

[Astrocat]

I still like to treat them as adults.
If they are grown adults, I am sure that they don;t need to have information kept from them as if they are children. This would include telling them about the reality of milk, should you feel a need to.
Disgust is as viable a reason as any other which you might have to find it 'bad' to consume milk.

The people who you mentioned appear to be rationalising the unethical in order to avoid facing, never mind accepting, the truth.
There is usually little way in which you yourself can change the mind of someone who is actively in denial, in order to try and make them face the truth.
That is just how self-delusion works - especially when it is reinforced by repetitive conditioning and widely held societal misconception or belief.

Your mother, i am sure, does surely realise that she no longer lives in the Alps, and does not get milk from singing smiley happy cows.

People who use a "best possible scenario" to try and justify or rationalise their own substantially more cruelly founded and unethical scenario and lifestyle have their mind closed to reality, or at least have their blinkers on in order to maintain their tunnel-vision.

I gave up trying to change these kinds of closed-minded peoples' minds long ago.
Life is much better now.

Oh, you might want to point out to them though - that pasteurised milk, which is 99.9999999% likely to be the sort which they are buying, is very capable indeed of killing a healthy calf within 90 days or less, as this process is such a perversion from nature.

[snaffler]

Use a health / animal welfare view.

The use of (Posimat Step 2) - (this is the product trade name) in UK Dairy cattle is used to increase milk yeild per cow this in turn causes severe health implacations to the cow herself causing
her severe discomfort and pain this is combatted with more chemicals being injected into her and in turn overiding the health problems that can be caused by Posimat step 2 a milk yeilding and growth chemical, made of god knows what ?.

Their has been for some time now but still unreleased evidence that this can and has caused growths and tumours in cows and many people in the research industry question if this can cause cancer / growths / tumors in humans by being passed through the milk.

[Astrocat]

but Snaffler - they wouldnt be doing that out in the Alps when his mum was little, so she quite probably would simply totally dismiss the truth accordingly.

She'll probably do that with the point i added about pasteurisation, too.

[John]

It seems that you need a two-pronged argument. One prong addressing the reality of where our dairy comes from; and the other prong addressing this supposed cow utopia.

We can easily point out what is wrong with inseminating a cow against her will; stealing her baby; keeping her baby chained in a small, dark, enclosure, until killing the baby; keeping the cow hooked up to machines for a large portion of her life; keeping the cow inside a crowded buliding for most of her life; giving her hormones to make her overproduce milk; feeding her a diet which causes her to be in pain and subject to infections; giving her large doses of antibiotics to fight these infections; and then killing her after her productivity has peaked.

On the other hand, in this lovely Alpine village the cow will only mate with a bull if she chooses to do so. The male calves are allowed to either become studs or they are castrated humanely and made to work as oxen since none are ever killed to eat. Even though the cows have to spend the winter in a barn, they are allowed to go out into the valleys during the warm months. Of course, there is no dairy with a milking-machine nearby which could irritate an udder and all milking is done by hand. Despite the strain put on their bodies by the constant production of milk, their health is never negatively affected. Finally, the cows die of old age.

If I were stuck in a small mountain village I might have to accept this life.

As good as this hypothetical (and imaginary) situation may sound, one is still living as a parasite on these cows. Since we can get all of the nutrients present in millk from non-animal sources and these non-animal sources are available to us, why exploit cows?

[Tigerlily]

You could also say:

"I'm a feminist, I respect females of all species."

This would work great for eggs too.

[mysh]

Oh, you might want to point out to them though - that pasteurised milk, which is 99.9999999% likely to be the sort which they are buying, is very capable indeed of killing a healthy calf within 90 days or less, as this process is such a perversion from nature.

Now that I did not know. Very fascinating!

[mysh]

It seems that you need a two-pronged argument. One prong addressing the reality of where our dairy comes from; and the other prong addressing this supposed cow utopia.

Yup - that's exactly what I'm looking for. And the reality is that in the Alpine villages where my mother used to go for vacation, and where some of her family still do go, the second scenario is really still true.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to get at here is the distinction between Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. If you show any rational person how cows are treated in a dairy factory farm, they'll be horrified and by strongly against it. So the Animal Welfare movement will now work strongly to improve the conditions for the cow. Then they say, "look, these are happy cows, they are treated well, allowed to live their lives, milked only of their excess milk," etc. You and I both know this is still unacceptable - the cow needs to be given its freedom. That's the Animal Rights aspect - animals should have the right to live their lives largely unimpacted by humans. But to persuade omnis of this you have to be able to argue why you think animals have these rights. So in this idyllic scenario for the cows, how do you argue?

[Geoff]

The 'idyllic' situation still involves cows bred to have extremely enlaged udders, which would never occur in nature (and must be uncomfortable, to say the least). You only have to look at a horse to see that. And what happens to the male calves? It may LOOK idyllic but what goes on behind the scenes? :(

[clawsy]

My 2 cents - I tend to think drinking milk is worse than eating meat. - I think milk looks less horrible as there no blood and guts and it doesn’t seem so much like a piece of flesh, so people are able to keep eating it a lot more easily than eating meat.
But I think drinking the cows milk causes more animal suffering than eating the cows flesh, A cow and MANY calves suffer to make milk. When you eat meat you are killing one animal, when you drink milk you are paying for heaps to be killed. The milk industry supplies the meat industry and the two are intertwined.

I also read that sometimes (and given populations that means thousands) dairy cows are pregnant when they are slaughtered. Most people gross out at this, to imagine baby calves suffocating in their mothers tummy when she is killed, or that a mother cow has to give birth in the slaugherhouse :( or to see their almost full grown fetuses in the slaughterhouse blood, Viva has some good pictures and articles about pregnant dairy cows being killed.

In my city, ages ago a dairy cow being taken to the slaughterhouse gave birth on the truck pretty much outside the building, on the motorway. The road outside it is a big steep hill and the calf rolled out of the truck and onto the road, the zoo took it and adopted it. At the time motorists were all freaking out because of this poor animal and it was in the paper.

[Michelle]

Have you reminded your mom and others that the milk they buy from the supermarket does not come from the "Cow's Paradise" farm that she fondly remembers? I get this argument all the time. I just tell them, "well, the milk you get at Wal-Mart doesn't come from Uncle Jed's farm, it comes from a factory farm" and they usually shut up because they ALL shop at Wal-Mart *big snarl*. But, they still run over and buy the milk.

On a side note: I've noticed lately that I can buy a gallon of soymilk for the same price that my husband can buy a gallon of cow's milk. No more of the excuse that it's cheaper than soymilk these days.

[mysh]

Actually, I don't know what the dairy farming conditions are like in Germany. Definitely a lot less hormones used (as they're illegal over there, due to the undesirable side effect of growing breasts on young boys).
Nonetheless, she does often go to farmer's markets where the small farmers go, who frequently do still have fairly idyllic farms.

I don't want to keep making the "it can be this bad" argument, when I know perfectly well that's spurious. We all know how terrible the dairy factory farms are. But would you drink the milk of a happy alpine cow, bred by choice, raised by its mother, on cow's milk, milked by hand, etc.? I certainly wouldn't anymore, so obviously the horrible treatment cows get in the factory farm isn't the only factor leading to my choice. And I still eat all kinds of junk food (e.g. Golden Oreos), so the healther thing certainly isn't it for me. So how do I explain to others that it shouldn't be a personal choice, that the decision to drink milk is no more defensible than buying cotton from a slave plantation?

[mysh]

On a side note: I've noticed lately that I can buy a gallon of soymilk for the same price that my husband can buy a gallon of cow's milk. No more of the excuse that it's cheaper than soymilk these days.

Yes, that is good!
My wife gets organic cow milk for herself and the kids, and my in-laws kinda freaked out this weekend - they wanted "normal" milk. What a bunch of morons!

On another aside, my son has a school friend whose mother grew up on a dairy farm. She used to have to inject the crap into the cows. She won't touch cow's milk with a barge pole.

[snivelingchild]

Well, in the ideal situation, the heart of animal right, I think, comes down to just that, rights. It is easier to see the wrong if we, in the past in the U.S., if black slaves we're not beaten or hurt, but their excess breast milk was taken away without their say in the matter. It depends on choice. It is their milk, and they should have a right to choose to keep it, and since they cannot be asked, it should not be taken.

If a woman whose newborn has died, but they are still capable of producing milk, they might choose to donate it for women who can't. But, imagine it being taken away against their will for people who don't NEED it. Most people would think that unacceptable, and I think the major point in animal rights is that all animals deserve the same basic rights as we do, thus making milk taking unethical.

This is what makes eating bugs or other supposed "unfeeling" beings, taking eggs, and taking milk unethical. Unless it is a choice you feel you must make for the good of the animal or of all animals (such as spaying and neutering or food choices of a companion animal), I think this applies.

[eve]

This afternoon outside the complex where I live, one of my male neighbours was talking with an electrician who came to fix the outside lights. The 'sparky' was saying to my neighbour that cows milk is all wrong for humans, etc, and my neighbour argued that he buys heaps of milk to drink because it has calcium. Anyway, I butted in to say that Vitasoy calci+ has plenty of calcium, and so do leafy green vegetables etc. The 'sparky' had a broad grin on his face, and asked me if I'd tried almond milk as well. Afterwards, my neighbour wanted to know more, and we had a nice chat. Hopefully some small changes will come about. :)

[Astrocat]

:) cool !


So how do I explain to others that it shouldn't be a personal choice, that the decision to drink milk is no more defensible than buying cotton from a slave plantation?

It seems to me that the issue being discussed here is a similar one to the one that was aired out in the "vegan view on eggs" topic, ie why is captivity in order to use others (ie their bodies or bodily fluids) for one's own benefits in itself a form of exploitation ?

Here there are no factory farms for a long way in any direction, so pretty much every farm is "idyllic" - the cows are still treated horribly, of course, but they look nice standing out in the fields with their swollen udders and chronic foot ulcers and digestional parasites etc.... thus the "idyllic" facade seems to be gobbled up by many consumers.

Even when there is no exploitation involved a great many people usually wouldn;t go sucking the titties of a human (ie their next-door-neighbour) to get milk - and give lame reasoning like "ewwww but that's GROSS" if asked why not (similar to the cat-milk debate) , so it seems thoroughly bizarre that it should be expected that people should have to justify not second-handedly sucking the titties of a cow, goat or sheep just because people en masse are conditioned not to find this gross or unnatural.