The dairy industry is bad news

myself & few others are looking into the possibility of buying land to make into a sanctury...its only a small step...but one step at a time

 

privately owned land...its very early stages....will talk more when it gets off the ground... which could be a while yet

 

hmmm i dunno why u think theres less animalsthen there used to be???? theres summin like 20 times as many chickens on the planet then there is humans, same with cows, theres loads of them, more then there should be, methane is a greenhouse gas and cow produces summin like 20 litres a day, dont quote me on figures cus i cant remember, but figures are out there if u wanna know.
as for pesticide.....what do u think the cows eat???? they eat crops that have been genetically modified and had pesticides used on em. it takes alot more land to produce meat then it does to produce crops, meat trade is a envoromental disaster. i dont think u can really class yourself as green if u eat meat.

i dunno if this post is out of context cus i havnt read it all. but there ya go.

 

its for animals not people!!....but yes....it would be a free space

 

goats milk is still abusing animals for your own end... slavery.....well... imo

 

Buddhism and Vegetarianism

Cattle

A cow's natural life expectancy is twenty years - fairly long for an animal - but most won't live beyond four. The demands placed upon their bodies, draining milk at a rate which nature never intended, will typically leave them spent by their fourth year. Naturally, their bodies would produce less than 1,000 litres of milk in a year. Due to selective breeding and modem husbandry techniques, they deliver between 6,000 and 12,000 litres.

To achieve this they are milked almost all year round, even while pregnant. There is a period of only a few weeks during which they are given a respite. This is when they are heavily pregnant and their body simply couldn't cope with a growing foetus as well as milking. Dairy cows often experience metabolic diseases because they can't take in enough nutrition to meet the demands of the milking machine. Their systems may run short of calcium or magnesium, bringing them to the point where they physically collapse. The demands placed on the cows' metabolism mean that they are often effectively malnourished, no matter how much they eat.

Cows are commonly artificially inseminated with semen from one of the large beef breeds. This gives a more valuable calf, which is good for the farmer. Unfortunately for the cow, this means that they give birth to a far larger calf than their pelvic girdle allows for. They frequently suffer greatly giving birth to these huge offspring, or require Caesarean operations, which weaken them further and shorten their lives.

A cow has to calve every year to produce milk, but her calf is taken away shortly after birth and fed on reconstituted milk. The mother's milk is too valuable a commodity to waste on a calf. Like most animals, the cow has a strongly developed maternal instinct and it's distressing for her to lose her calf. It's upsetting for the calf as well.

Whereas a calf would have suckled, on and off, all day long, the cow is milked by machine, usually only twice a day. Cows frequently suffer from painful mastitis - due mainly to the amount of milk they have to produce. The pressure of accumulated milk causes great pain. Cows sometimes kick their own udders because they are in such distress. Eventually the strain may cause the ligaments of the udder to give way and the cow will be useless for milking. A short trip to the abattoir and her brief life is over.

People often assume that cows produce milk just because they are cows, and that producing milk is what they do - as if it were their job. But cows produce milk only in order to feed a calf. They have to be made pregnant every year so that they keep producing milk. This results in a lot of calves as a side-effect of milk production. What happens to a calf once it is taken from its mother? Not many need to be kept to maintain the dairy herd. Some 42 per cent of them end up as beef at around eighteen months old. Some are sent off a few days old to be reared as veal. The meat industry and the dairy industry are inseparable and as much as 80 per cent of beef comes from dairy farms.

The calves destined to become beef tend to have the most natural lives. Some are kept on grass and can roam relatively freely, although many live out their lives on concrete and are fed concentrates to accelerate their growth. They may be castrated and dehorned. Both these operations are highly stressful and usually very painful. The animals find being handled very distressing and they are often castrated without anaesthetic. Animals are dehorned to make them safer to handle. The operation should be performed under local anaesthetic. Unfortunately, animals are usually dehorned in batches, so the anaesthetic often hasn't started to work or it may have begun to wear off by the time the dehorning starts. Worse still, I knew one vet who didn't always use anaesthetics at all because some farmers wouldn't pay the extra cost. 'If they see me taking the anaesthetic out of my bag they just laugh,' he told me.

You may wonder why having a horn cut off requires anaesthetics. The reason is that horns contain nerves and blood vessels. Having a hom removed is not like having your fingernails trimmed but more like having a finger or even a hand sawn off.

Veal was originally just the meat of an unweaned one- or two-day-old calf. Because they were so young, and had never eaten grass or exercised, their meat was un- usually pale and tender. It was also expensive because there isn't much eating on a baby calf. Now veal production has become an industrial process. The calves are still taken from their mothers at a day old, but they are now kept in highly artificial conditions in order to keep their flesh pale and soft. Veal calves often live in pens so small that they can barely move. This stops them from using their muscles, so their flesh remains very tender. Sometimes they are kept in virtual darkness because there is a rather irrational belief that this contributes to the paleness of the meat. This makes observation for illness next to impossible, of course, so disease may go untreated.

However, the very nature of veal production prevents the welfare of veal calves being of crucial interest to those who rear them. The calves are allowed no solid food and are fed only on milk substitutes deficient in iron. Veal calves are deliberately made ill with anaemia in order to keep the meat pale. A malnpurished calf is the whole point of the veal system. In addition, their stomachs, which are designed to process large quantities of roughage, are deprived of anything solid whatsoever. The calves are not even allowed straw to lie on in case they eat it. Their craving for roughage is so strong that they chew on wood and eat their own coats. Their lives are very distressing.

However, even before the calves reach the veal units they have to face the stresses of transportation. It's unpleasant and distressing for us to be in a bus or crowded underground train in the rush-hour; how much more so then for animals being transported for (as current UK regulations allow) up to 28 hours in such conditions, for much of that time unable to feed or drink. At least when we endure such circumstances for a much shorter period we know why we are there - the animals are terror-stricken because of the unfamiliarity of the whole experience. It was against these movements of animals that thousands of people protested at airports and docks in the UK in 1995. These mass demonstrations resulted in changes in the regulations affecting UK veal production, but conditions in many other parts of the world are unchanged.

 

I would disagree with that to an extent.

Right wing politics can be said to be decision making based on greed and capitalism, left wing politics is about decisions based upon compassion and equality.

Politics is very much about ethics; hence the whole debate over the rights and wrongs of going to war for oil (or anything else), the abolition of foxhunting, the abolition of child labour and sweatshops, slavery, civil rights, pro or anti-abortion lobbies ... These are all arguments that are fought and discussed because of ethics.

 

yup....killimg amimals is a big issue for left politics....poll?

 

**bangs head on desk**

This is the most overused, untrue, let's-impose-feelings-of-guilt-on-meat-eaters argument ever.

First of all, (and I did a year-long research project on world hunger, so I know what I'm talking about) famine only accounts for 10% of all hunger deaths. It is the most publicised, because the media can film a bunch of emaciated people all at once, making their job easier. But, the majority of hunger deaths happen behind closed doors--people are chronically undernourished, their immune system plummets, and they end up dying from a cold rather than actual starvation.

Second of all, THE WORLD ALREADY PRODUCES ENOUGH GRAIN ALONE TO PROVIDE EVERY HUMAN BEING ON EARTH WITH 2,700 CALORIES A DAY! It is a myth that there isn't enough food to go around. In fact, there is often an abundance of food in the same countries people are starving in, but the people that are starving don't have the money to buy the food. It is poverty that is killing people, not meat-eaters.

In places where food just isn't available, it is due to a fucked-up distribution system. Think about this--even if all the land in the US that is currently used for livestock were instead used for crops, how would that change the situation in Ethiopia? The US already sends food aid there, and the reason we don't send more isn't because we don't have enough to give, it's because our policies only allow for so much food aid.

Another thing to point out is that alot of the land used for cows isn't suitable for farming. It is important to remember that bringing in unnatural irrigation systems, and turning not-so-arable-land into farmland is a bad idea. If an area is made to be a desert, let it be a desert--otherwise you start to fuck with mother nature, and this has caused desertification and climate change, along with disease (the malaria rate in Ethiopia skyrocketed when irrigation was introduced because with the water came misquitoes).

Sorry if I sound mad, it's just a pet peeve of mine when vegans pretend meat-eaters kill babies in Ethiopia

-Kate

 

hmm.... what are you on about? you murder amimals not humans....its still a life though

 

I don't think that anyone here has every implied that ... Why gets so defensive?

 

Yay you. I've been taking an active interest in the field for the last 17 years, so I think I know what I'm talking about.

And guess who can afford to buy the grain? Yes, that's right! Rich Western countries that then feed it to cattle to turn into burgers so us rich Westerners can stuff meat down our throats. Guess they missed that bit in your research project.

 

Yes, but bacteria are also alive, and I don't have any problems washing my hands. As for intelligent life, the vegan lifestyle is not cruelty free either. Ever hear of rabbit and rodent populations getting caught up in plows and hacked to death? Sure it's not intentional, but you still support it. Also, even if you buy organic, they have to control pests somehow. And if they don't use pesticides, they most often use an increase in the pests natural predators, which still creates an imbalance of nature. Face it--no lifestyle can be 100% cruelty-free unless you live on a mountain and grow your own food, which isn't very practical in today's society.

And Paul, my whole point was that you can't use world hunger as an argument to support veganism. There are good reasons for becoming vegetarian, but hunger is not one of them.

 

What exactly did I miss? I said poor people couldn't afford it, so obviously rich people can. And I already told you--even dispite the meat industry, there is still enough grain to feed everyone on Earth 2,700 calories a day. If you are suggesting that we take the grain used for cattle and give it to developing nations (and btw, in case you didn't know, the grain they produce for cattle is generally poor quality and not fit for human consumption anyway) in the form of food aid, that won't help them in the long-term. The only thing that would do is increase their dependancy on the west. If you really want to help them, sustainable development--both in ecology and business--is the answer.

 

**bangs head on desk**

This is the most overused, untrue, let's-impose-feelings-of-guilt-on-vegetarians argument ever.

Ever tried catching a rabbit? I bet you couldn't. But somehow you think it's going to fail to notice 10 tons of approaching combine harvester?

Quite aside from which, the goal of vegetarianism or veganism is not to eliminate animal suffering - it's to reduce it as far as is practicable. Nobody will ever be able to live a 100% cruelty-free lifestyle - we can just try to do as much as we are able.

 

Quite. So they're growing grain to subsidise our meat habit. It therefore follows that if we didn't eat meat, we wouldn't need to buy their grain.

 

http://www.wildlifedamagecontrol.com/animalrights/leastharm.htm

http://www.veggieboards.com/boards/showthread.php?t=28069&page=1

 

How can you quote a post from another bulletin board as a valid reference? (and from a banned member of that board too)

As for the argument though ... killing animals to save wildlife ... get real

 

Are you expecting me to be shocked by the photo? Yes, you have to kill the animal to get the meat. Did you think I didn't know that?