Thinking Critically About Happy Cows

Editor's note: Thanks and apologies both go to Mary for this contribution -- thanks for the thoughtful piece and apologies because she submitted it a month ago, and I forgot that I was sitting on it. -SE

Part of what I do as vegan education is deconstruct articles that address animals, animal rights, animal welfare, vegetarianism and/or veganism. The idea is to examine the language and the assumptions and stories behind the language and to distill the articles down to their essence. Now, what the essence ends up being once the article is unpacked is often different from what the author is likely to have intended. But that’s largely the point. Every written communication has at least one message, and I consider it my job to uncover the one under all of the layers of diction, syntax and culture.

I recently landed in a dream position for someone like me (i.e., interested in the intersection of language, culture and animals): Two people sent the same article to me. One person thought it was a great step in the right direction, and the other wasn’t as impressed.

Let’s deconstruct “This Farm Is Dedicated to Happy Cows, Not Happy Meals,” about the International Society for Cow Protection in West Virginia:

“William Dove and his family keep 22 cows and oxen comfortable for their entire lives and plan to chant the holy names of God to each animal as it dies a natural death at their farm outside of Moundsville.”

Obviously, whenever someone is caring for animals and meeting their needs and doesn’t plan to exploit and/or slaughter them, that’s great news. Before we make a judgment about how great the news is here, let’s attend to a bit of language: calling animals “it,” which to be fair, might not have been the original intention of the writer, as an editor was likely involved.

Let’s also attend to the bit of culture in that one sentence: religion has something to do with this story. And when religion is involved, you often find that the animals involved have been deemed worthy of admiration or contempt depending on the religion. For instance, for the Hare Krishna like William Dove, cows are sacred. The cow is worthy of living her natural life without torture and slaughter because she “has special status as one of the ‘seven mothers’ of human beings.” Also, “a well-treated cow’s soul could become a human. But an ill-treated cow’s soul could end up worse off in the next life.” That’s all well and good for the cow, but what about the chicken and the pig? The cows are being saved because of their relationship to humans in this story -- not because they are sentient beings deserving of a life free of exploitation and torment.

Furthermore, the cows in this situation are not at all free of exploitation. Yes, they are probably treated better than most cows and oxen on most farms. But they are still milked, castrated and trained, as “visitors to the farm learn how to train oxen and how to do farm work with them.”

And then comes this: "A lot of them already are vegetarians and some of them are vegans who want to have dairy products in their diet but don't want to support the factory farming.” That stopped me in my tracks as vegans don’t want to have dairy products in their lives. Nor do they ordinarily think that training oxen to work and using cows for their milk are acceptable. This is where it all breaks down for me as someone who doesn’t believe in exploiting sentient nonhumans.

Though there is plenty that is positive about the attitude toward cows -- and other animals we use for food -- I’m left feeling very skeptical when I read things like the following: “The amount of food that a cow can give, which is high quality food - milk, cheese, butter - without the violence, far outweighs the amount of decaying flesh (from) a dead cow in a slaughterhouse.” This (along with an earlier statement about how the cows aren’t “asked to do hard labor”) tells me that consent is somehow possible in this situation -- that the cows willingly give or do things. When I look through the photos in the slide show (like this one), I get a mixed message about just how sacred cows are.

Yes, it’s great that Dove’s organization is allowing a couple dozen cows to live their somewhat-natural lives. But those lives aren’t free of exploitation, and the reason the cows are being treated so well is their connection to humans as stated in a religious text.

The essence of this article includes no message that exploitation of sentient nonhumans -- even cows -- is unacceptable. Meanwhile, there is a clear message that treating cows well while you use them is desirable as it might help the cow become a human, and I don’t like that message.