WEBVTT 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:07.319 Today is about challenging appearances and assumptions of extremism and normality. 00:00:07.319 --> 00:00:10.110 Today is a lesson in unlearning. 00:00:10.110 --> 00:00:16.040 And what better way to unlearn than to start our journey at the end and work our way back 00:00:16.040 --> 00:00:17.040 to the beginning? 00:00:17.040 --> 00:00:22.670 And what better way to question what’s accepted as good and normal than with something as 00:00:22.670 --> 00:00:28.800 wholesome and every day as a glass of milk? 00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:32.170 The source of milk is no big secret: it comes from cows. 00:00:32.170 --> 00:00:37.110 But that’s about as far back as most people trace milk’s journey to our refrigerated 00:00:37.110 --> 00:00:38.910 grocery case. 00:00:38.910 --> 00:00:42.530 Most of us grow up thinking that cows are made to be milked. 00:00:42.530 --> 00:00:47.640 We may think they have a constant supply of milk and even that they need to be milked 00:00:47.640 --> 00:00:49.700 to relieve the pressure. 00:00:49.700 --> 00:00:52.860 Well let’s look at this critically for a moment. 00:00:52.860 --> 00:00:55.180 Cows are mammals, just like us. 00:00:55.180 --> 00:01:00.460 And mammals produce milk for one reason: to feed their babies. 00:01:00.460 --> 00:01:05.820 Cows carry their babies for 9 months, just like we do, they lactate to feed their babies, 00:01:05.820 --> 00:01:11.460 just like we do, and after weaning, they stop producing milk, just like we do. 00:01:11.460 --> 00:01:18.120 So in order to have a constant supply of cow’s milk for human consumption, we need a constant 00:01:18.120 --> 00:01:20.940 supply of pregnant cows. 00:01:20.940 --> 00:01:26.470 In the dairy industry, cows are repeatedly inseminated, which is a nice word for raped. 00:01:26.470 --> 00:01:27.470 The restraining apparatus used to secure the cows is literally referred to within the dairy 00:01:27.470 --> 00:01:28.470 industry, at least in America, as a “rape rack,” so this isn’t a term dreamed up 00:01:28.470 --> 00:01:29.470 by vegans activists. 00:01:29.470 --> 00:01:32.800 Once a cow gives birth, we face another roadblock to our milk’s journey. 00:01:32.800 --> 00:01:35.740 Babies, after all, drink their mother’s milk. 00:01:35.740 --> 00:01:41.810 So to make sure there’s constant supply of milk for us, the babies must be taken away 00:01:41.810 --> 00:01:43.790 soon after birth. 00:01:43.790 --> 00:01:47.200 This is precisely what occurs in the dairy industry. 00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:53.140 If the calf is a male, he is sent to a veal farm where he is tied down, unable to move, 00:01:53.140 --> 00:01:57.430 or locked in a cage where he cannot even turn around until he’s slaughtered while still 00:01:57.430 --> 00:01:59.340 only a few weeks old. 00:01:59.340 --> 00:02:06.850 Veal, an industry that even many meat-eaters oppose, wouldn’t exist without dairy. 00:02:06.850 --> 00:02:13.220 Every cup of yogurt, every scoop of ice cream and every glass of milk is directly connected 00:02:13.220 --> 00:02:15.790 to the deaths of those baby calves. 00:02:15.790 --> 00:02:20.870 But we’re not quite done tracing milk’s path to our cereal bowls. 00:02:20.870 --> 00:02:26.150 While the slaughter of babies is certainly horrific enough, we cannot forget the mothers 00:02:26.150 --> 00:02:28.400 left behind. 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:35.730 Cows bond intensely with their calves and will cry out for days when they are taken. 00:02:35.730 --> 00:02:41.360 When residents of Newbury, MA called the police to report disturbing noises emanating from 00:02:41.360 --> 00:02:44.400 the Sunshine Dairy farm at all hours of the day and night, the police explained that the 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:49.240 mother cows were “lamenting the separation from their calves”—but not to worry as 00:02:49.240 --> 00:02:55.980 “the cows are not in distress and that the noises are a normal part of farming practices.” 00:02:55.980 --> 00:02:57.050 This is not anthropomorphizing. 00:02:57.050 --> 00:03:05.490 It is a mother’s grief and it’s utterly heartbreaking to watch. 00:03:05.490 --> 00:03:12.739 The bodies of dairy cows generally give out at age 4 or 5 and they are regarded as “spent,” 00:03:12.739 --> 00:03:16.530 despite their natural lifespan of 20 years or more. 00:03:16.530 --> 00:03:23.500 They’re sent to slaughter for cheap meat and pet food, deemed unfit for human consumption. 00:03:23.500 --> 00:03:28.610 At the slaughterhouse, many of these mothers face their final and most brutal separation 00:03:28.610 --> 00:03:31.700 from yet another child. 00:03:31.700 --> 00:03:37.239 While formal statistics are difficult to obtain as most studies focus on the economic cost 00:03:37.239 --> 00:03:43.010 of “fetal wastage,” accounts range from approximately 10% to 70% of cows arriving 00:03:43.010 --> 00:03:45.010 at the slaughterhouse pregnant. 00:03:45.010 --> 00:03:51.260 But this most horrific and final separation of mother and child was just the last in a 00:03:51.260 --> 00:03:57.819 cycle of pregnancy after pregnancy and loss after loss. 00:03:57.819 --> 00:04:03.130 When we push onwards through to our dairy cow’s beginning, back past the first pregnancy, 00:04:03.130 --> 00:04:08.379 before she became the broken, hollowed-out shell eventually collapsing under the insane 00:04:08.379 --> 00:04:12.420 demands of her short life, we come to her birth. 00:04:12.420 --> 00:04:18.249 The moment she emerges into the world, wide-eyed and brand new. 00:04:18.249 --> 00:04:22.259 The moment she’s taken from her own mother. 00:04:22.259 --> 00:04:27.949 You see we talked about what happened to the male calves who are sent off for veal. 00:04:27.949 --> 00:04:32.270 Well the daughters of the dairy industry are still separated from their mothers. 00:04:32.270 --> 00:04:36.669 But they’re kept around to take their mother’s place and keep the money machine going. 00:04:36.669 --> 00:04:38.740 Keep the milk flowing. 00:04:38.740 --> 00:04:44.789 So that in every grocery story, every corner shop, every gas station, will be sure to stock 00:04:44.789 --> 00:04:49.549 this wholesome, normalized, entirely ordinary product. 00:04:50.260 --> 00:04:53.120 We are being sold the pus-filled 00:04:53.420 --> 00:04:57.860 ultimate outcome of rape, enslavement, kidnapping, abuse, disease, torture, 00:04:57.860 --> 00:04:59.300 infanticide, and murder— 00:04:59.300 --> 00:05:02.000 whitewashed into an image 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:04.000 of wholesome nutrition. 00:05:06.120 --> 00:05:08.400 As vegan activist Gary Yourofsky has said, 00:05:08.400 --> 00:05:11.900 it’s the greatest magic trick ever performed. 00:05:14.300 --> 00:05:16.860 And people say veganism is extreme. 00:05:18.819 --> 00:05:24.469 The animal products we perceive as mundane, when reverse engineered, reveal a perversely 00:05:24.469 --> 00:05:29.830 complex and, to put it lightly, ethically challenging, journey from genesis through 00:05:29.830 --> 00:05:33.919 processing and production to the end product. 00:05:33.919 --> 00:05:39.409 That is to say, from the animals’ birth, through confinement, abuse, slaughter and 00:05:39.409 --> 00:05:45.069 denigration of corpses to the shiny, happy, store-ready products we literally eat up 00:05:45.520 --> 00:05:49.160 without even a single thought as to what the animals went through.