I am from Canada and grew up in the small city of St. Catharines, Ontario. We considered it a treat to go out on a Sunday afternoon to a local dairy and get ice cream there. It wasn't until many years later, I learned the revolting truth about dairy farming.
Twenty-four years ago, I saw a report on the evening news about a downed dairy cow.
I grew up believing the lie, that dairies are happy, wholesome places, but nothing could be further from the truth as I soon learned. Nothing.
This poor cow, had collapsed on the farm. It happens to lots of them. They finally just give out after years of being sodomized, raped and forced to birth large calves (causes nerve damage in the back legs and hips which contributes to many of them collapsing) then having their babies taken away.
Why take their babies? Well... if you use dairy, you are taking the milk the momma cows made for them. Some calves (males) are put in tiny pens for a few weeks then slaughtered, females might be raised to take their mother's place. Others still, just outright killed by either beating them to death with hammers, shooting them, drowning them or just leaving them in a pen to starve to death. What kind of FILTH treats animals like this... a dairy farmer does.
Many dairy cows are kept confined on concrete or wood for the duration of their short lives. A cow can typically live until 20+ years, but most dairy cows only survive until about 4 or 5.
The cow in the story I saw was put in a pickup truck and taken to the nearby slaughterhouse. She was then shoved out onto the asphalt and left there, in agony, with a shattered pelvis for about 2 days... no water, no medical attention.
Then, a man came out of the slaughterhouse, put a rope around her neck and dragged her all of the way across the asphalt parking lot, up a ramp and into the building, ripping the skin on her legs and belly. Absolutely brutal and one of the most cruel, horrifying examples of animal abuse I had ever seen, but totally legal in the dairy industry. Treating cows like that is common.
In these two photos, you see downed cows. The workers will beat, burn, electrocute, stab, and kick them to try to get them back up. The ones who cannot get up again, are often picked up using forklifts, special lifters dairy farmers use (because so many animals go down, these horribly people keep machines on their farms just to try and pick them again... horrifying). Frequently though, the animal is through... she cannot get up again, so is dragged out and killed.
In a slaughterhouse, the animal needs to be able to walk in, but a lot of them are dragged in. That is illegal yes, but we all know, how very little supervision there is by the USDA in these industries. The horror stories keep mounting.
Over the next 20 years I visited as many farms as I could, to see for myself what life is like for farmed animals. I saw dairy, cattle, poultry and pig farms. Each of them were horrifying, but the worst I saw back then were poultry and dairy.
I visited farms in California, Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin. At one dairy, I saw a wooden pallet stacked with dead calves that the farmer had beaten to death. I saw animals living knee deep in their own feces and urine. I saw scars and open wounds and maggots... lots and lots of maggots. I also saw animals, dead... just laying where they fell.
It is LAUGHABLE to me when people who support this horrifying industry lie and tell other people "No, a dairy farmer LOVES their animals. They wouldn't risk their PROFITS by hurting them". But they do... thousands and thousands of calves and cows, sexually abused, mutilated, beaten, burned, stabbed, hung, cut, shot, dragged, confined, starved and brutally slaughtered year after year. This industry is a nightmare and no one, anywhere, needs to be sucking tittie juice from another species.
Not only does dairy waste precious resources (it takes 4.5 gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk), wastes our tax dollars, creates MASSIVE pollution to the point that it is one of the primary contributors of our climate crisis but the cruelty to the animals (all legal) is the worst part. These people don't care the absolutely depth they will sink to, to abuse these animals. For many, it is fun. They like to hear them scream in fear and agony. A lot of people in this business also do it because they not only sodomize and rape the cows, to impregnate them... they have sex with them too.
It is also LAUGHABLE to me when sycophants say "God put them here for us". Oh my God! Well, I don't believe in any gods or religions, but tell me, what kind of a god would create these beautiful creatures that feel emotions like we do, that feel pain and suffer like we do, then let humans rape, beat, mutilate, burn and horribly abuse them. What kind of a god does something like that?! Humans prove year after year after year what terrible stewards we are of this planet, so why would a god let these innocent animals suffer at the hands of sadists.
The way things are going, it will take a catastrophe to truly wake people up and stop doing this, but, it won't be long. The planet is at the tipping point and the pollution and waste of our natural resources continues at an alarming rate. I do hope people wake up soon, and stop this. As a species, we are little more than monsters destroying everyone and everything around us.
BOYCOTT DAIRY!!!!