Where Dairy Is Cruel and Where Calves and Slaughter Aren't Ignored, Take 2

Note: This post has been edited and revised. My original version was directed too personally at Greg, and for that, I apologize.

Greg at Sustainable Food has a post up in defense of what he calls "not cruel" organic dairy :"Where Dairy Isn't Cruel." I imagine--though I don't know for certain--that the post and some of its remarks directed at animal advocates are at least in part a response to some of the posts on this blog.

I will first make one comment that I did not make on Greg's post itself after first reading it. Greg refers to animal advocates who encourage people to give dairy the boot as "anti-dairy advocates." And with all due respect to Greg, that is some serious industry spin. Animal advocates are just that--advocates for animals--and terms such as "anti-dairy" are an attempt to direct attention away from that and put a negative spin on why animal advocates support and fight for the changes they do: for the animals.

And second, I'll  paraphrase and summarize here what I said directly in Greg's comment thread (or what I tried to write there, anyway; my brain was fuzzy, and I fumbled a couple phrases, in addition to going "And" happy at the start of all my sentences):

I was frustrated that Greg didn't once mention the calves in his post on the cruelties (or supposed non-cruelties) of dairy--and frustrated rather than unsurprised because, from past conversations, I believe Greg knows that a primary reason animal rights advocates argue that dairy is inherently cruel is the requirement that calves, for whom the cows produce milk in the first place, be forcibly removed from their mothers, most often as newborns, and killed (and most often turned into veal), which is traumatic and indeed cruel for mother and child both.

All cows used for dairy--even on truly small, organic farms and even on farms that outwardly seem "humane," like the one Greg describes--will ultimately be slaughtered, just like cows raised primarily for flesh, when their milk production declines and they are no longer profitable. And all cows used for dairy are forcibly impregnated, year after year, to keep the calves (and thus the milk) coming.

And I didn't find any evidence to back up Greg's argument that dairies such as the one he described are not "exploitative." Are cows being used for human profit? Are the cows being forcibly impregnated and then used for human pleasure? Are their very reproductive systems being treated like factories, with the calves treated like byproduct? Are the calves and the cows both slaughtered for their flesh? Yes. And that's exploitation.

Finally, I struggled with this remark from Greg, which I believe he meant sincerely, but which I don't believe he thought through: he wants animal rights advocates to "support the small farmers out there who treat their animals as well as they treat their children." Unless these farmers also rape, mutilate, and eventually kill all their children, either as newborns or as young adults, this is a preposterous statement.

My colleague Greg also believes that animal rights advocates speak and advocate without knowing what they're talking about. But he is wrong. Beyond the fact that even advocates without direct farm experience do educate themselves, some of the strongest, most effective voices in the animal rights movement once worked in--and even ran--animal ag operations (small and large both), including dairy operations.

For one of those voices, see this testimonial from Cheri Ezell-Vandersluis. She and her husband Jim operated dairies, cow and goat dairies both. Now? They run a farm animal sanctuary and speak out against the myth that animal agriculture can be humane.

I've written no shortage of posts on this blog related to dairy in the last year. Here are links to most of them, for anyone who wants to explore:

• For Vegetarians and Meat-Eaters: The Calm Nature of Slaughter
• "Fair Trade" Does Not an Ethical Chocolate Bar Make
• Pregnancy at Slaughter: What Happens to the Calves? Part 1
• Pregnancy at Slaughter: What Happens to the Calves? Part 2
• Animals Are Mothers and Have Mothers Too
• A Side of Rotting Baby Carcass with Your Morning Milk?
• Your Dairy Dollars at Work
• Jeremy and Lenny: Rescued from Death at a Small Local Dairy
• The Slaughterhouse Is Always the Only Exit for Dairy Cows
• From the Glossary: Dairy and the "Rape Rack"
• Oregon's Livestock "Rendering Crisis"