Do We Have to Stop Drinking Milk & Go Dairy Free?

Cow Appreciation Day

“Mummy, I don’t wanna drink my milk!” — “But honey you have to, it will make your bones stronger!”

Milk has been praised as one of the healthiest products of all times. But nowadays, more and more people develop lactose intolerance. Do you know why? Because cow milk is naturally designed for cows, not for humans (obviously). Cow milk contains a lot more lactose than human mother milk and that’s too much for the digestive system of numerous people. Just like humans, cows only produce milk when they had a baby and they have to be inseminated regularly for this reason. Did you even know that? In this milk production circle, calves are a waste product. They’re separated from their mothers shortly after birth and are often slaughtered before they ever even get to see a green field. So, since it’s Cow Appreciation Day, I wanted to raise awareness about the sad fate of today’s cows.

Farmer: “A complaint about sexual harassment at work?”

Cow: “You call it milking, I call it sick!”

(My translation)

I recently bought an environmental magazine in which I found real advertising slogans of modern stable technology producers. Stables are not what they used to be — they’re factories. I picked a few of these slogans to share with you. All of them were printed in German in Greenpeace Magazin 3.15.

“By reproducing an environment that is as close to natural as possible, cows live for one lactation period longer on average. This doubles the profit you make from each cow.”

Naturally, cows could easily live for 20 years. But in an ‘as close to natural as possible’ factory environment, they’re usually slaughtered after just five years. Due to their increased milk production, most cows develop inflammations and other diseases.

“The dual water beds provide the animals with high comfort. The positioning boxes prevents the cows from oblique positioning, which leads to the boxes remaining cleaner.”

To increase the milk production, cows are fed a lot of soy, which they cannot digest very well. They thus need to rest for the most part of the day, so the easily cleanable rubber beds sound comfy, right?

I won’t say much more about this, but I could ramble on for hours. I’m not saying we should all stop drinking milk immediately (I still consume dairy products from time to time), but why not give the alternatives a chance? In order to show cows our appreciation, we would rather not steal their milk and stop separating them from their children. It would be much better to just give plant-based milk a try. My personal favourites are soy and almond milk (local and GM-free of course).

Until the next post,

Carina