Cows have basic needs just as we humans do. Due to the industry that pushes cows to their limits for producing milk, cows are tortured for milk.
I’m penning down my thoughts on this issue of animal cruelty on the loving and calm creatures that cows are because when I first read about them, it made me tear up.
I’d never wondered how the milk that we buy from the stores comes there in the first place.
With sharing the torture that cows face, I hope this creates a difference and makes you rethink if you actually need that milk.
Table Of Contents
Are Cows tortured for milk?
No Access To Basic Needs
At a very young age, in fact, just after a day when their calves are born, they are taken away.
Cows have no chance of nurturing their young ones. The dairy industry confines them to four walls, treating them like a machine.
Repeated Insemination
Antibiotics and hormones are pumped into a cow’s body forcefully to make them produce more milk. Female cows lactate for about 10 months after giving birth.
As soon as this period ends, they are inseminated again and this cycle goes on forever. They never see the light of the day, the fresh grass outside or even a wind breeze.
Almost all of them spend their lives huddled in a crowded hall with other cows, surrounded by concrete walls, amidst their own feces. As read on PETA, a North Carolina dairy closed its doors following revelations from a whistleblower that the cows were forced to eat, walk and sleep in knee-deep waste.
Can you image yourself living every day in the middle of your own shit?
While cows suffer on factory farms, humans who drink their milk increase their chances of developing heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and many other ailments.
Reduced Lifespan, from 20 years to just 5 years
[click_to_tweet tweet=”The natural lifespan of cows is of about 20 years. Due to the severe conditions, they’re kept in and how badly they’re treated their lifespan has been significantly shortened. #PETA #garimashares” quote=”The natural lifespan of cows is of about 20 years. Due to the severe conditions, they’re kept in and how badly they’re treated their lifespan has been significantly shortened.” theme=”style6″]
Cows can produce milk for 8-9 years. The stress and treatment received by them in dairy farms make them highly prone to diseases, lameness and reproductive problems which reduces their years of producing milk from 9 to 5.
What happens when they stop giving milk? Poor souls are sent to be slaughtered.
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How do Cows produce so much milk?
They don’t naturally, cows are tortured and inseminated repeatedly to get every ounce of milk from them. And when they are too exhausted to produce milk, they are sent off to be slaughtered and sold as meat.
On any given day, there are more than 9 million cows on U.S. dairy farms—about 12 million fewer than there were in 1950. Yet milk production has continued to increase, from 116 billion pounds of milk per year in 1950 to 206 billion pounds in 2014. (Source: PETA)
To push the cows to their limits, they are fed chicken feathers, fish, antibiotics and hormones.
This diet enables them to produce more milk than they naturally would. The usual diet which includes grass doesn’t produce the amount of milk the industry wants.
Inflammation of their mammary glands
It is a very common reason why cows are sent to be slaughtered. Mastitis is a is painful inflammation of the mammary glands.
It is caused by the tension faced by the glands as suction pipes are attached to them in order to automate the milking procedure.
The picture below might be unsettling for some of you. Machines are literally attached to the cow’s mammary glands with no concern if it hurts them.
There are about 150 types of bacteria that can cause Mastitis. Its symptoms are not visible, so a check is kept on the milk’s somatic cell count (SCC) to know if the cow suffers from some kind of infection.
Healthy milk has an SCC of 100,000 cells per milliliter. But the milk that we get, is allowed to have a staggering amount of 750,000 SCC by the dairy industry.
So, the milk that you drink every day thinking it is going to make you healthy, is not actually doing its job. SCC value of 750,000 indicates that two-thirds of the cows of the herd are infected.
Human Body Doesn’t Need Cow’s Milk
According to the American Gastroenterological Association, cow’s milk is the number one cause of food allergies in infants and children. Their milk is meant for their calves who gain hundreds of pounds in a matter of months.
Lactase is an enzyme that is produced in our human bodies which helps us to digest milk. Surprisingly, our bodies begin producing a decreased amount of lactase just by the age of 2. This leads to people being lactose intolerant.
In lactose tolerant people, having more than one glass of milk a day can cause bloating, cramps, gas and increased risks of asthma.
According to a U.K. study, people who suffered from irregular heartbeats, asthma, headaches, fatigue, and digestive problems “showed marked and often complete improvements in their health after cutting milk from their diets.
You’re Not Getting Calcium From a Cow’s Milk
As you read above, as we age, our bodies produce less lactase. Result? Our body can’t digest milk and utilize the calcium that it has. We can get all the calcium we need from seeds, nuts, yeast, beans, and other legumes.
Cows are tortured for nothing.
A Harvard Nurses’ Study of more than 77,000 women ages 34 to 59 found that those who consumed two or more glasses of milk per day had higher risks of broken hips and arms than those who drank one glass or less per day.
Colin Campbell, professor of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University, said, “The association between the intake of animal protein and fracture rates appears to be as strong as that between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.”35
Eating too much animal protein has been linked to the development of endometrial, pancreatic, and prostate cancer. Consuming too much protein may also put a strain on the kidneys, causing them to compensate by leaching calcium from the bones. (Source: PETA)
What You Can Do
Avoid buying milk and switch to other alternatives for your calcium intake. Soy, rice, oat and nut milk are great too! Share this article with people to spread awareness. Bust the myth,
You don’t get calcium from drinking cow’s milk
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