Your Milk's Mother

Today is about challenging appearances and
assumptions of extremism and normality.

Today is a lesson in unlearning.

And what better way to unlearn than to start
our journey at the end and work our way back

to the beginning?

And what better way to question what’s accepted
as good and normal than with something as

wholesome and every day as a glass of milk?

The source of milk is no big secret: it comes
from cows.

But that’s about as far back as most people
trace milk’s journey to our refrigerated

grocery case.

Most of us grow up thinking that cows are
made to be milked.

We may think they have a constant supply of
milk and even that they need to be milked

to relieve the pressure.

Well let’s look at this critically for a
moment.

Cows are mammals, just like us.

And mammals produce milk for one reason: to
feed their babies.

Cows carry their babies for 9 months, just
like we do, they lactate to feed their babies,

just like we do, and after weaning, they stop
producing milk, just like we do.

So in order to have a constant supply of cow’s
milk for human consumption, we need a constant

supply of pregnant cows.

In the dairy industry, cows are repeatedly
inseminated, which is a nice word for raped.

The restraining apparatus used to secure the
cows is literally referred to within the dairy

industry, at least in America, as a “rape
rack,” so this isn’t a term dreamed up

by vegans activists.

Once a cow gives birth, we face another roadblock
to our milk’s journey.

Babies, after all, drink their mother’s
milk.

So to make sure there’s constant supply
of milk for us, the babies must be taken away

soon after birth.

This is precisely what occurs in the dairy
industry.

If the calf is a male, he is sent to a veal
farm where he is tied down, unable to move,

or locked in a cage where he cannot even turn
around until he’s slaughtered while still

only a few weeks old.

Veal, an industry that even many meat-eaters
oppose, wouldn’t exist without dairy.

Every cup of yogurt, every scoop of ice cream
and every glass of milk is directly connected

to the deaths of those baby calves.

But we’re not quite done tracing milk’s
path to our cereal bowls.

While the slaughter of babies is certainly
horrific enough, we cannot forget the mothers

left behind.

Cows bond intensely with their calves and
will cry out for days when they are taken.

When residents of Newbury, MA called the police
to report disturbing noises emanating from

the Sunshine Dairy farm at all hours of the
day and night, the police explained that the

mother cows were “lamenting the separation
from their calves”—but not to worry as

“the cows are not in distress and that the
noises are a normal part of farming practices.”

This is not anthropomorphizing.

It is a mother’s grief and it’s utterly
heartbreaking to watch.

The bodies of dairy cows generally give out
at age 4 or 5 and they are regarded as “spent,”

despite their natural lifespan of 20 years
or more.

They’re sent to slaughter for cheap meat
and pet food, deemed unfit for human consumption.

At the slaughterhouse, many of these mothers
face their final and most brutal separation

from yet another child.

While formal statistics are difficult to obtain
as most studies focus on the economic cost

of “fetal wastage,” accounts range from
approximately 10% to 70% of cows arriving

at the slaughterhouse pregnant.

But this most horrific and final separation
of mother and child was just the last in a

cycle of pregnancy after pregnancy and loss
after loss.

When we push onwards through to our dairy
cow’s beginning, back past the first pregnancy,

before she became the broken, hollowed-out
shell eventually collapsing under the insane

demands of her short life, we come to her
birth.

The moment she emerges into the world, wide-eyed
and brand new.

The moment she’s taken from her own mother.

You see we talked about what happened to the
male calves who are sent off for veal.

Well the daughters of the dairy industry are
still separated from their mothers.

But they’re kept around to take their mother’s
place and keep the money machine going.

Keep the milk flowing.

So that in every grocery story, every corner
shop, every gas station, will be sure to stock

this wholesome, normalized, entirely ordinary product.

We are being sold the pus-filled

ultimate outcome of rape, enslavement,
kidnapping, abuse, disease, torture,

infanticide, and murder—

whitewashed into an image

of wholesome nutrition.

As vegan activist Gary Yourofsky has said,

it’s the greatest magic trick ever performed.

And people say veganism is extreme.

The animal products we perceive as mundane,
when reverse engineered, reveal a perversely

complex and, to put it lightly, ethically
challenging, journey from genesis through

processing and production to the end product.

That is to say, from the animals’ birth,
through confinement, abuse, slaughter and

denigration of corpses to the shiny, happy,
store-ready products we literally eat up

without even a single thought
as to what the animals went through.