“Got Milk?” Sure, most people seem to. It can be found in every supermarket, with shelves lined with cartons or plastic jugs of it, and cows happily roaming the green pastures on their labels. Dairy is one of those rare food groups that spans ubiquitously through most people’s lives - it’s the first thing most babies consume after their mother’s milk, and we never really stop having it after that. I was no exception to the dairy craze most of the world is subject to. I remember drinking glass after glass of milk, and each time feeling like it was seeping straight into strengthening my bones or whitening my teeth. I loved all things dairy - freshly grated parmesan, mature aged cheddar, and condensed milk were some of my favourites. I was enamoured with the idea that it was a lush, green farm bringing me all these fresh, creamy products. Milk came from cows just as rain comes from clouds, and having grown up in Switzerland I even got to witness these beautiful creatures first hand. Now imagine my shock when at 16, I found out it was all one big con. The dairy industry is not some coalition of happy, little farms with peaceful cows sleeping in meadows. The dairy industry is hell on Earth.
The modern human being has been around on Earth for the past 200,000 years, while historians have dated the practice of consuming cows’ milk back to the past 8,000 to 10,000 years. This means drinking another species’ milk isn’t instinctual and we don’t naturally need or ‘crave’ it. So how did it become so prevalent? The answer lies in corruption, power, greed, and above all - mass manipulation. Over thousands of years, lactase persistence evolved in European regions (all early humans past their toddler stage were lactose intolerant), dairy cows were domesticated, cheesemaking was invented, millions of people died from illnesses carried in milk prior to pasteurisation, and we were brought to the beginnings of the modern day dairy con1.
Entire books could be written about the depths of how deeply the dairy industry has deceived the public, with their promotions, slogans, and federally funded programmes. One must also marvel at their tenacity and how they managed to convince billions of people that milk is a health food, and not just an extremely well funded and marketed product. It’s a disturbing truth and I encourage everyone to read up on it here. Additionally, dairy is a significant contributor to climate change. American milk consumption (in fluid form) emits 95 billion lb. of CO2 emissions each year - equivalent to 9.2 million cars. Globally the average production of a glass of dairy milk results in almost triple the emissions of any non-dairy milk, and over 10 times as much land as an oat milk alternative.
Even more pressing than these, figures, however, are innocent cows behind them. Strongly maternal like humans, cows form deep bonds with their young and must give birth to produce milk. Dairy farmers forcefully impregnate them each year in order to keep the milk flowing2. This is typically done by artificial insemination as opposed to natural mating - a painful process where a worker will insert their arm into a cow’s cervix through its anus and inject it with bull semen3. Once a cow gives birth, mere hours later, her calf will be taken from her so the milk intended for it can be taken and sold for humans to consume. The mothers bellow night and day in the days following separation, searching for their calves. They’ve been known to grieve their young for weeks.
The male calves are considered waste products of the dairy industry as they will never produce milk. They’re kept in isolation for five days, then herded onto a truck and sent to the slaughterhouse. Food can be withheld from them for the final 30 hours of their lives. As Joaquin Phoenix details in the documentary, Dominion - “starved, confused and desperate for affection, they cry for their mothers from the holding pens of the slaughterhouse where they’ll be killed the following morning.” Some male calves may be grown out for longer, around 20 weeks, to then be slaughtered for veal. The female calves are kept in isolation, fed with a powdered milk replacement, and eventually face their mothers’ fate when they are also impregnated. The lactating cows are packed into the milking shed 2-3 times a day, and hooked to rough, industrial milking machines. Cows can live up to 20 years in natural conditions4. On dairy farms, they last four to eight years. They live a life of cyclical emotional and physical torture, continuously impregnated, and making up to 10 times more milk than they would naturally. When their milk production slows or they become too injured, they are sent to slaughter. It’s a heartbreaking sequence of events, and a living nightmare for these innocent beings. All to put some milk in a coffee or some cheese on a pizza.
It can be hard to make change, and it’s very easy to feel helpless. Associating some liquid in a plastic jug to the immense suffering that put it there can be difficult, but we must. It may seem that one person won’t make a difference, but imagine if every person who said that actually did alter their habits - there would certainly be an impact. Change has to start somewhere, and the individual consumer can have far more influence than they may believe. Just look at what happened to Blockbuster or PanAm - supply and demand can have drastic effects on our society and our tastes and habits are ever evolving with the times. Humans used to live in caves, but that doesn’t mean we still have to today. In fact, our species relies on constantly adapting and evolving in response to our environment. Is a 5 minute meal really worth the future of the planet and an innocent life? I’ve been vegan for four years now, and I’ll admit, it was very hard at first. Dairy was “my life”, and there’s a lot of ingredients in dairy products that make them addictive, but I can honestly say I don’t miss a thing anymore. There are countless alternatives and yes, they may taste slightly different but that slight discrepancy is a small price to pay in a matter of life and death. How revolting would it be to drink your own mum’s milk at this age, or eat some cheese made with human milk? Now imagine a whole other species’ milk? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s time to take a step closer to peace - to leave dairy in the past, and cows’ milk to the babies it belongs to.
References
1 Switch4Good. “The Twisted History of Milk in America.” Plant Based News, 1 Oct. 2020, plantbasednews.org/opinion/twisted-history-milk-america/.
2 Foreman, Polly. “Inside the UK Farming Industry: How Are Animals Kept and Killed in Britain?” Plant Based News, 19 Apr. 2023, plantbasednews.org/culture/ethics/inside-uk-farming-industry-how-animals-killed-britain/.
3 Delforce, Chris. “Transcript - Dominion Movement - Animal Rights Documentary Dominion: We Will Rise Together.” Dominion Movement - Animal Rights Documentary DOMINION | We Will Rise Together, www.dominionmovement.com/transcript. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024.
4 “The Dairy Industry.” PETA, 30 Nov. 2022, www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/cows/dairy-industry/.
All images from Dominion Documentary by Chris Delforce except the sanctuary image from FOUR PAWS International (https://www.four-paws.org/campaigns-topics/topics/nutrition/a-bonding-affair)
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