How much suffering is involved in raw milk
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I’ve been finding better health results with dairy in general since I struggle with grains, legumes and even starches and I’ve been kind of disgusted by meat recently. I’m curious how much suffering animals endure in milk production. I know factory farming and large dairy operations are awful but how about a local farmer with a few cows or goats? Knowing that typically milk is produced solely for babies, is it the case that genetic modifications over time has created a scenario where there’s an abundance of milk and the animals don’t mind? It’s hard to get clear answer online.
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@nothingclever Consider how many ecosystems are destroyed and how many animals are killed for your beans. Cow pastures are a far more of a flourishing ecosystem than a bean field is.
Furthermore, cows are 500 pounds of muscle. Unlike chickens or pigs you can't really force them into bad living conditions. Unhappy cows are not economical, they will wreck your shit, run away and produce shitty milk.
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@pittybitty “ Furthermore, cows are 500 pounds of muscle. Unlike chickens or pigs you can't really force them into bad living conditions. Unhappy cows are not economical, they will wreck your shit, run away and produce shitty milk.”
The dairy industry and factory farming proves otherwise.
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If the goal is having milk drinkers and omnivores feel guilty or conscious we could improve sth in the system, seek out "micro-dairies" or "calf-at-foot" farms. In these systems, the calf stays with the mother for several months, and humans only take the surplus.
Optimization:
Focus on "Nose-to-Tail" consumption. One grass-fed cow can provide over 400,000 calories. This represents one death for a year’s worth of high-density nutrition.
The Impact: By choosing one large ruminant over thousands of industrially farmed chickens or billions of "protected" crop calories, you minimize the total number of sentient lives affected.
Avoid the "Soy-Corn" Trap
The suffering in the dairy and meat industry is largely a byproduct of the grain-finishing system.Only support farmers who avoid soy and corn feed. This reduces the demand for the very monocrops that destroy coral reefs (via nitrogen runoff) and kill the oceans.
Animal Welfare: Ruminants are designed to ferment cellulose (grass), not starch (grains). A grass-fed animal is a metabolically healthy animal; it does not suffer from the acidosis and inflammatory diseases prevalent in feedlots.
To provide a constructive endpoint that moves beyond guilt and toward a "less culprit" path, we must focus on bio-energetic Integrity. The goal is to align our biological needs with the least possible disruption …Final Closing Thought
"We cannot exist without impact, but we can choose the quality of that impact. Moving away from industrial factory farming—both plant and animal—is the real ethical frontier. By choosing pastured dairy and regenerative meat, we aren't just 'consumers'; we become part of a cycle that restores the soil, protects the oceans from chemical runoff, and respects the dignity of the animals. The goal is not to be perfect, but to be a conscious participant in a living system, since we’re built to be omnivores.
If you don't feel so, you're free to adopt / adapt another system. But please, change your approach ... -
@nothingclever Not really. You can't believe every propaganda effort.
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@LucH ya I got a similar response from ChatGPT
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I'm not a dairy farmer, this is from what I've read and the little that I have seen.
I think the mother cows and their calves are usually separated from each other on dairy farms, which can't be too pleasant, but other than that, pasture-raised dairy farming should be pretty free of suffering for the animals. A lactating cow actually suffers when she ISN'T milked. The pressure builds up in the udder.
By the way, the separation of cow and calf is not actually required if you are producing milk for your own use, non-commercially. (google "calf sharing") There is enough milk for you and for the calf at the same time. The mother cow just produces more milk to meet the demand. It's as if she had twins and has to produce enough for two calves instead of one. No genetic engineering required for this much milk production.
However, you can't really separate dairy production from meat production though, if you are bothered by that. To get milk, there has to be a calf approximately every year, and to avoid overpopulation, most of those calves have to go for meat eventually.
You could argue that pasture raised meat is actually more humane than pasture raised dairy since the meat animals only have one or two stressful days (waiting to be butchered) and then die instantly without pain. But dairy production involves the mother cow and the calf enduring the hardship of being separated from each other.
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@pittybitty sure I can
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@Insr ethically tenuous world it seems
