• Grapetruth@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I don’t use Facebook lol. I’m glad we agree that dairy farming causes severe suffering for cows and their calves, hugely impacts climate change, and that we need to stop doing it for their own benefit, and ours.

    All of these practices still definitely happen on various farms around the world, especially in factory farming, and the worst of them are the standard practice. For example, cows make breast milk for their baby calves, not for humans. It’s exploitation by its very nature for humans to steal that milk. In almost all cases, the calves are denied the milk, separated from their mothers and killed for veal. Cows are artificially inseminated to keep them continually pregnant to produce milk, and have been selectively bred to overproduce so much that it very often causes them mastitis, lameness, spinal issues and destroys their bodies over time; sometimes they collapse completely. Once they can no longer produce milk, they too are killed for cheap beef at only 4-6 years old when they can live until 20-25. Any exception to this is rare, still involves immense harm to cows and calves, and can’t provide enough dairy for everyone (especially for cheese, which uses 10x as much milk than milk itself).

    Dairy farming is unsustainable and cruel, and the products are unhealthy for humans and contribute to inflammation and disease. Lactose intolerance in adulthood was the natural state of humans for a reason. The lactose persistent gene is an unnatural adaptation and doesn’t prevent the health impacts of dairy.