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The human body
has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs'
milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk.
Michael Klaper
Cows are amongst
the gentlest of breathing creatures
none show more passionate tenderness to their young when
deprived of them and, in short, I am not ashamed to
profess a deep love for these quiet creatures
Thomas de Quincey
The natural life
expectancy of cattle is about twenty years or so.
Contrary to popular belief cows are intelligent animals.
According to researchers they have good memories, never
forgetting a place or a face; they can get excited when
they solve an intellectual challenge; cows have
cognitive abilities and understand cause and effect; they
have the ability to learn from one another and have a
complex social system, choosing friends and leaders.
To
read more about the complex lives of cows visit Go
Veg's website
and
read the excellent article The Hidden Lives Of Cows
GoVeg.com // Cruelty to Animals // Cows // The Hidden
Lives of Cows
Cows have
personality traits, a whole range of characteristics as
varied as your pet cat or dog and indeed yourself. Just
like us some are friendly, whilst
others are aggressive. Some are devious and bold, while others
are shy and nervous. Some are completely
indifferent, and who can blame them considering how they
are treated by us.
Cows are highly
social animals, they form friendships and have close
bonds with family members and are very maternal, they
grieve terribly when their young are taken from them as
you will read later.
Did you know that
when a heard of cows settle down for a nap they position
themselves according to their status in the herd. In
fact very much like us social relationships influence
many aspects of their daily lives. Also similar to us if
we were penned in with people we do not know and crammed
into a tiny space, cows become stressed and aggressive
towards one another fighting for dominance. This is
because cows in factory farms cannot live in accordance
with their natural social inclinations. Cows like to be
with their families and friends, and live in accordance
with their social hierarchy. In the confined conditions
in factory farms this is not possible.
Don't be fooled by
the dairy industry's advertising of dairy products with
cattle grazing peacefully in fields of buttercups, with
the sun warming their backs and their calves by their
sides, in most cases nothing could be further from the
truth. Here is the grim reality behind your beef burger,
glass of milk and pat of butter
In the UK there are
approximately 10 million cattle, of these approximately 3
million cows graze on pasture in the
spring and summer, many are housed in cow sheds during
the autumn and winter but increasingly more are zero
grazed; confined to sheds on a permanent basis, more
about this later.
Like other factory farmed animals
the lot of cattle is a life filled with misery and
exploitation in dreadful conditions.
The dairy cow
is raised to produce milk not beef, she is kept constantly
pregnant in a continuous and exhausting cycle of misery.
Within two to three months of giving birth cows are
impregnated again, mostly by artificial insemination. As
lactation lasts around 10 months the cow is
simultaneously pregnant and lactating for 6 to 8 months
during each calving cycle. Cows have a 6 to 8 week
period between lactation ceasing and their next calving.
In order to provide you with milk, a food
that we like every other mammal no longer needs after
weaning, she is milked two or three times each day and
often much more frequently as you will read further down. Her
calves are taken away within twenty four hours after the
calf has taken the colostrum, which in all animals
protects the young one from disease. However the calf is
removed before he or she can have any of the milk which
must all be kept for humans, a calf never has any of his
or her mother's milk. Cows are good mothers, they are
severely traumatised when thier calves are taken away
from them, they can bellow for days.
In
his book, The Pig Who Sang to the Moon Jeffrey Mason
tells of an account given him by an RSPCA officer
concerning one particular cow, who was considerably
distraught for a period of six weeks by the loss of her
calf. When the calf was removed she was beside herself
with grief, gazing into the empty pen bellowing for hour
after hour, only moving when forced to do so. Even after
six weeks she would stare into the pen, it was as though
her spirit was broken as she gazed into the pen in the
forlorn hope that she would find her calf there.
Because of man's
interference a cow will produce as much as 7,000 litres
of milk each year, an enormous amount far in access of that
requried by her calf, and three times the amount
produced a century ago. This drastic increase is the
result of injecting the cow with growth hormones to
produce more milk. An outrageous and inhumane
abuse of another living being; treating a cow as though
she is nothing more than a milk producing machine,
spouting milk rather like a spring spouts water.
The atrocities of
course do not stop there. What happens to her calf? If
he is male he is considered an unwanted by product of
the dairy industry and unless he is requried for
breeding he is shot after barely a week of life. Here is
an eye witness account of what happens in an intensive factory farm:
‘When I got to
the farm, I could see that a cow had just calved. The
young calf was just a few hours old and was suckling. I
stood watching and smiling. There is no more beautiful
sight. The farmer came over and - I thought - tousled
the calf’s ear. But there was a gun in his other hand
and he put it to the calf’s head. When the shot fired,
the mother jumped and ran. The calf went down kicking
but he didn’t die outright. He was dragged away, still
kicking as the milk spilled from his mouth.’ :
Quoted in Animal
Aid.org
Animal Aid: Secret Filming Reveals the Rise and Collapse
of the ‘Battery Cow’
A male calf
is only kept with his mother and reprieved from almost
immediate slaughter if other than for breeding he is
being raised for meat, the least intensive is the
suckler method. The calf is kept with his mother until
weaned and than fed on grass and no doubt growth
hormones for a couple of years to put on wieght before
being slaughtered.
More intensive
methods involve the calf being taken from his mother at
birth and reared in a pen on replacer milk and pellets.
Eventually these unfortunate creatures will be taken to
fattening sheds, which may confine as many as 8,000
animals crammed into stalls to stop them moving around
and wasting energy, and fed on high quality cereals.
Straw beds may be provided but many have to stand on
slatted flooring which is difficult to stand on and
results in lameness. In the first week of life calves
are castrated, their horns are chemically burnt. In
this way they gain wieght quickly and are slaughtered at
only 11 to 12 months.
My perspective
of veganism was most affected by learning that the veal
calf is a by-product of dairying, and that in essence
there is a slice of veal in every glass of what I had
thought was an innocuous white liquid - milk.
Rynn
Berry, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook,
1998
Male calves who
are unsuitable to be raised as beef are reared for veal.
The rearing of these calves for veal is one of notoriously
dreadful cruelty. The much sought after requirements of
veal is that the meat is soft and that it is white. In
order for this to happen calves raised for veal
are kept in the dark fed only on liquids which keeps their
flesh soft, and deliberately kept anaemic by being fed on
food low in iron. This results is chronic diarrhoea,
which continues until they are slaughtered. This is done to make the meat white
because this is what consumers require. In many
countries, but not here in the UK, in order to prevent the young animal
from expending too much energy, calves reared for veal
are kept in a wooden slated crate which is little bigger
than himself with no room to turn
round or to lie down, this enforced immobility keeps the
flesh tender.
However here in the UK where veal is not
as popular as it is in main land Europe, keeping calves for
veal caged in this manner has been banned. Most people
are however unaware of the abuse that takes place in
order to provide veal. Many people will immediately stop
eating veal when they become aware of the treatment to
the calf.
Selectively bred,
genetically manipulated, and fed with concentrated feeds and hormones she produces ten times more milk
than her calf would have needed to suckle. The dire
consequences of over milking result in the painful,
distressing and potentially fatal condition of mastitis,
an infection of the udder, the antibiotics forced up her
udders do little to control the disease: antibiotics to
treat mastitis are painfully injected up the teat canal.
As a precaution many farmers inject their entire herd.
And keep in mind such treatments are not to ease the
cow's suffering but rather to improve the cows continued
viability as a milk producing machine. Her udders as a
consequence of man's interventions are oversized, as
many as two thirds of cows become lame from foot and leg
disorders that result from difficulties
walking due to the huge size of her udders. Often she can barely walk, so
heavy and cumbersome are her udders. The dairy cow is
forced in the way described above to produce ten litres
of milk per day, normally a cows udder will hold only 2
litres. The overload of milk causes the udder to become
so heavy that it drags on the ground. I have seen cows in
fields with the most enormous udders and in my naivety
recall wondering why nature produced such an impediment,
such an obvious burden. Of course this is part of the
problem, the public ignorance of the atrocities
which take place.
Furthermore she becomes exhausted and
her muscles waste away as a result of the enormous
expenditure of energy required to produce these
unnatural amounts of milk. After three years of such
misery cows are utterly spent, exhausted and many die
well short of thier life expectancy of 21 years or more.
There is a case of a cow in Ireland living until she was
39, so who knows cows may live longer in the wild than we
realise. Those who somehow cope with the
exhaustion, survive mastitis and other diseases are in
any case slaughtered for their meat after giving birth
to as many as eight calves, after between four to seven
years of exploitation. Moreover as many as 25 percent of
dairy cows are actually pregnant when they are killed.
Of course many cows
are not kept in fields but in milking sheds, dark dank
places with concrete floors - a major cause of lameness
- tethered in a narrow stall unable to graze or
follow their natural inclinations. Rather like battery
hens many cows are kept in such conditions all year
round, only a very few are put out to pasture. Grass and
other feed consisting of high protein diet to increase
milk yield is brought to them. This is called zero
grazing and takes the cruelty of dairy farming to another
level; grazing is a strong natural instinct as is the
rearing of their young. In even more severe and
inhumane scenarios cows
are intensively milked day and night by computer
automated machines, the old fashion farm where a cow is
milked twice a day, twelve hours apart is becoming a thing
of the past.
Any modicum of freedom is
denied them, instead of standing in grass, in the
warmth of the sun and the cool of the breeze they now
stand on concrete floors in their own excrement, there is
no mental stimulation, they suffer lameness and the
misery of mastitis. Such intensive farming results in
high levels of stress, disease and psychological damage.
Again many people
who do not live in the country or make regular visits
persist in the delusion of pre factory farming, and
maintain a now false impression of the idyllic farm
setting, cows grazing in fields tending their young is
one of the most erroneous. I have lived within easy
access of the countryside for most of my life. My family
and I regularly visit the Yorkshire dales and other
areas of farming in the north and in Scotland, but it
has not been until recently that I questioned why there
are so few cows and their calves
grazing in fields, and only very occasionally a bull, and
I have been a vegetarian for sixteen years and a vegan
for two. However few visit the country, let alone
question the absence of cattle.
Other serious
conditions are prevalent due to over milking and
unhygienic conditions in which she is kept, including
BSE which I understand was caused by feeding cattle, an
herbivore, with sheep's brains .
“There’s no reason
to drink cow’s milk at any time in your life. It was
designed for calves, not humans, and we should all stop
drinking it today.”
Dr Frank A. Oski, Former Director of Pediatrics, Johns
Hopkins University
Of all farm animals
the cow is the hardest worked. Considered as nothing
more than a milk producing machine and stock replenisher,
the poor creature lives her wretched life in exhaustion
and misery suffering many health problems as a result of
this relentless abuse. She produces milk, about
120 pints each day, while she simultaneously nurtures a
growing calf inside her womb. To maintain this high level of birth-rate she is forcibly impregnated every year in a
manner which is both painful and stressful. And after
all that suffering the greatest trauma of all awaits her
as her infant is taken from her within a day or two
after birth.
"The
dairy cow is a supreme example of an overworked mother.
She is the hardest working of all our farm animals and
it can be scientifically calculated. It is equivalent to
a jogger who goes out for six to eight hours a day which
is a lunatic pursuit.” He states that almost 100 per
cent of cows suffer from laminitis - a disease which
causes 'great pain to the cow' (MAFF). Tissue lining of
the foot becomes inflamed and may lead to ulcers.
Professor Webster continues: "To understand the pain of
laminitis it helps to imagine crushing your finger nails
in the door then standing on your fingertips."
Professor John Webster, Department of Animal Husbandry,
Bristol University quoted in VIVA
End Factory Farming 4
Finally after
enduring a miserable pain filled life enhanced by the
sorrow of being deprived of her calves, exhausted and
now spent when her milk and reproductive capabilities
have ceased, she is sent to the slaughter house. However
her suffering is by no means over. And although it may
seem that death brings about a cessation of suffering,
death of course is yet another form of cruelty as no
creature wishes to end his or her existence,
particularly in the horrifying manner meted out in the
slaughter house.
Prior to killing,
cattle are stunned with a device called a captive bolt
pistol which drives a bolt into the skull which renders
the animal unconscious as a result of brain damage and
the concussive blow to the skull. Other devices, a non
penetrative stunner, bring about unconsciousness
by a concussive blow only to the skull without entering
the brain.
"If an animal is
not accurately stunned or the correct cartridge strength
is not used, the stun will not be effective. The EU
Scientific Veterinary Committee estimate that around 5
to 10% of cattle are not stunned effectively with the
captive bolt - or up to 230,000 animals a year. These
animals experience the pain of being shot in the head
and will either be stunned again (a difficult procedure)
or continue on for knifing whilst conscious."
Extract : VIVA'S
investigative article: Sentenced to Death
The slaughter of Farmed Animals in the UK. Viva!
- Vegetarians International Voice for Animals
These animals have
experienced the pain of being shot in the head, and
because they will recall this pain it makes it difficult to
administer
the captive bolt a second time. Do not imagine for one
moment that such procedures are not painful, common sense
tells you that stunning an animal in such a manner will
inflict terrible pain. The delusion promoted that such
methods are humane and painless by the meat industry and
all those who profit from this heinous trade is a
deliberate misconception, it is in their
interest for you to believe that the slaughter is 'humane,'
when the truth of the matter is that it is anything but.
It is a painful and horrific way for a cow or other farm
animal to meet his or her death after years of misery
and abuse. And of course by now the animal is well aware
of her fate, she knows she is to die, her fear is
palpable, and is passed on to others further down the
line. You can read some shocking accounts further down.
As a result of
failure to stun more pain and fear awaits the already
traumatised animal; many animals will continue along the
production line, for make no mistake this is precisely
what an abattoir is, and many an unfortuante cow may
still be conscious when she has her throat cut and
slowly bleeds to death.
To control the
terrified creature and improve the accuracy of the above
method cattle are restrained in a pen or have thier
heads securely fastened. As you can well imagine this
causes stress, in fact I would think extreme fear would
be a more appropriate description. Legislation requires
that these methods of restraint are used to improve
accuracy, however, about 17 per cent of abattoirs do not
use a restraint or the restraint is insufficient, with the
result that stunning may be ineffective.
Other problems with
adequately stunning may result from
inadequate maintenance of the pistol. Improper stunning
may mean the animals is conscious when he has his throat
cut. The period of unconsciousness induced by stunning
should be longer than the period between stunning and
bleeding out after his or her throat is cut.
Calves are usually
stunned electrically which involves passing an
electrical charge of large voltage across the poor
creature's brain, the pain of which is unimaginable.
This method brings about a shorter period when the
animal is unconscious than it does in other species. In
their Cattle information sheet the vegetarian society
says:
"A number of
studies have shown that calves also take longer to lose
brain function after throat cutting. Anil et al (1995a)
found that responsiveness can be present in the brains
of calves for as long as 104 seconds after
neck-sticking. Because of this many calves show clear
signs of recovery during bleeding out "
The Vegetarian Society - Cattle Information Sheet
A truly horrific
scenario which surely is painful not to mention
terrifying for the poor creatures. These atrocities may take place
in front of the cows waiting in line to receive similar
treatment.
Jeffery
Mason in his book 'The Pig who Sang to the Moon' describes
how Kimberly Muncaster the manager of the New Zealand
Branch of the Society for the Protection of Animals
stopped eating beef :
"A friend told
her that she passed a slaughter house every morning on
her way to work( in Perth Australia), and she noticed
the cows lined up in the preslaughter pen from where
they could see their companions being killed. They where
trembling - they could barely stand up they where
shaking so badly. They were absolutley terrified. When
Muncaster heard this she realised that she could never
eat an animal whose ends was so terrible. She became a
vegetarian from that day on."
Quoted in VIVA'S
investigative article, Sentenced to Death
The slaughter of Farmed Animals in the UK, Abattoir vet
Gabriele Meurer says:
‘Not many
animals stand still. They are all upset, some very
frightened and some move violently. The animals are
never given time to calm down. Sometimes the
slaughterman misses, wounding the animal terribly
instead of stunning it. It may happen that the second
shot cannot be done immediately and the animal is
suffering for quite some time.’
Viva! - Vegetarians International Voice for Animals
A veteran
USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has
seen: "Cattle dragged and choked... knocking 'em four,
five, ten times. Every now and then when they're
stunned they come back to life, and they're up there
agonizing. They're supposed to be re-stunned but
sometimes they aren't and they'll go through the
skinning process alive. I've worked in four large
[slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones. They're
all the same. If people were to see this, they'd
probably feel really bad about it. But in a packing
house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn't mean
anything." Slaughterhouse 1997
The following
is an extract from the article
Brutal Harvest: 'They Die Piece by Piece'
Joby Warrick,
"It takes 25
minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern
slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works. For 20 years,
his post was “second-legger,” a job that entails cutting
hocks off carcasses as they whirl past at a rate of 309
an hour.
The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to
Moreno. But too often they weren’t.
They blink. They make noises,” he said softly. “The head
moves, the eyes are wide and looking around.” Still
Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of
animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious.
Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly
ripper, the hide puller. “They die,” said Moreno, “piece
by piece.”
Under a 23-year-old federal law, slaughtered cattle and
hogs first must be “stunned” — rendered insensible to
pain — with a blow to the head or an electric shock. But
at overtaxed plants, the law is sometimes broken, with
cruel consequences for animals as well as workers.
Enforcement records, interviews, videos and worker
affidavits describe repeated violations of the Humane
Slaughter Act at dozens of slaughterhouses, ranging from
the smallest, custom butcheries to modern, automated
establishments such as the sprawling IBP Inc. plant
here where Moreno works."
Please read the
full article
brutal harvest, cow, cows, cow slaughter, piece by
piece, animal cruelty, slaughter
If this is not bad
enough frightened animals are controlled by an electric
goad, a device that can be used legally. This instrument
is
designed to inflict pain, this is what it is
intentionally designed to do, and is used on the
hind quarters of pigs and cattle if they refuse to move
forward.
To add further to
the shocking reality exhausted dairy cows are sometimes
subjected to a final painful experience before they are
killed. It is becoming increasingly common for trainee
artificial inseminators to practice on cows in abattoirs
prior to them being slaughtered. For so called welfare
reasons trainees are advised to only carry this
procedure out on cows who will be slaughter the
following day. This obviously implies that this
procedure is distressful for cows, and that if they are
to die the next day this than does not matter. Of course
it matters, pain and distress matter at anytime and is
not mitigated if the poor animal is to die the following
day, pain and distress is still suffering for the animal
regardless of the length of time that follows afterwards.
Such is so obviously animal abuse, can you imagine
mistreating your sick dog before he is put to sleep by
experimenting on him, imagine if the local vet practised
such procedures on your pet before
putting him or her to sleep. And indeed don't forget
these cows are sick, not of course that such would be
acceptable even if they where not, suffering from the conditions
described above and in addition, as already mentioned,
25 percent are slaughtered whilst pregnant! Such
treatment demonstrates that these sentient beings are
considered with as much concern and compassion to their
welfare as car parts on a conveyer belt in a production
line!
Why is it okay to
inhumanely commit such heinous atrocities on one animal,
but it is a crime to do so upon another? No one would be
allowed to cause the same suffering to pets that is
carried out on farm animals with impunity. There is no
such thing as animal welfare in farming, a term so
liberally banded about, that
involves suffering to animals in any way shape or form,
including crowded dark and dank confinement, housed in
pens with barely room to move, forced to stand in their
own excrement, fed antibiotics, artificially
inseminated, to remind you of just a few of the
mistreatment to which cows and other farm animals are
subjected, culminating in their premature
and painful demise in the
slaughter house. Tell me what is humane about that! The whole practice of rearing another creature
to kill him or her is cruel, but perhaps the most cruel
is the unrelenting abuse and misery of factory farming
on sentient creatures who experience pain, both emotional
and physical as do you and I.
I just
could not stand the idea of eating meat - I really do
think that it has made me calmer.... People's general
awareness is getting much better, even down to buying a
pint of milk: the fact that the calves are actually
killed so that the milk doesn't go to them but to us
cannot really be right, and if you have seen a cow in a
state of extreme distress because it cannot understand
why its calf isn't by, it can make you think a lot.
Kate Bush
The shocking
examples of abuse cited above, and on the many websites
of the animal rights organisations referred to
here and in and the links section below, are wide
spread, global.
I was shocked though in my research whilst compiling
this webpage to come across an article describing the
abuse of cattle in India, which seems rather incongruous
with the Hindu belief that cows are sacred.
When I was
growing up in India, the images of happy cows were
everywhere. The cows who wandered the dusty streets
sometimes wore garlands, symbols of respect placed about
their necks by Hindus or Jains. Not that life was easy
for them. Overworked bullocks pulled carts through the
clamor of city streets, breathing in the stinking diesel
fumes, sweating in the searing India heat. Sometimes
they collapsed under their burdens, and the drivers beat
them with thick wooden sticks to make them rise and
stumble on through the chaos.
But there was a remnant of Gandhi’s reverence for life.
Today, under heavy Western influence, it has vanished.
When I returned to India with PETA colleagues this year,
I found a thriving trade in beef and leather that means
starvation, thirst, beatings, broken bones and cruel
slaughter. There is no single culprit for the suffering:
Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Jains are complicit in
the trade, and the flesh and skin end up as far away as
Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Europe and America.
Extract from:
Sacred
No More:
Abuse of Cows in China and India Exposed
Read the complete
article:
Sacred No More, Abuse of Cows in China and India Exposed
The following
is a moving
poem concerning the plight of cattle in India:
On a Mountain Road
in India
Ingrid Newkirk, Founder, PETA
On the bend in the
mountain road
where the cattle have been dropped —
dropped, thrown, dragged from the truck —
I kneel in the dirt beside you now,
your horns against my ear.
Your massive cow face in my hands.
I remember the experts said, “Watch out!
A single blow from that huge head can
kill a man.
That head weighs as much as your
whole body.
Whatever you do, beware of those horns!”
But you have known
people all of your life.
Grew up with little boys goading you
down dusty streets.
Sat in the evening in the village
listening to the birds
watching the cooking fires
grateful to the man
who unhitched the yoke
and let you graze.
Your eyes are
weeping from the tobacco
and green chili peppers
smeared inside them
by men who thought the burn would
make you stand,
that twisting your tail
until it snapped for the sixth or eighth time
would make you rise.
But a bull with a broken pelvis can’t get to his feet.
You let me dig deep
into the corner of your eyes,
searching for the seeds and leaves
through my tears and yours.
You sit patiently while I pour water into the crevices
to flush out the pain.
To
finish reading this poem please
by clicking:
cow, cows, cow slaughter, Indian cows, leather, poem,
poetry | Ingrid Newkirk
Consider the facts:
Humans are the only animal that continues to drink milk
after they are weaned - the milk of another animal.
Why cows milk? You
would not drink dog or cats milk, it is unthinkable,
ludicrous! Yet you drink cows milk, a mammal like
your cat and your dog so it is just as bizarre. But few
question this, many people are brought up to consider
that it is natural and that is what cows are for, to
provide you with milk.
Fact: Approximately
75 percent of black people, and most people in Asia
and 15 percent of white people
are lactose intolerant (allergic to cows milk). Does that
tell you something? Cows milk is not meant for humans. I
think it is more than likely that many of us here in the
west are lactose intolerant. When I was a child in the
1950s my parents where advised to eliminate milk from my
diet due to chronic illness.
Fact: A cows milk is
for her calf only, not for you or for you to feed to your
cat! Feeding your cat milk is as unnatural for him or
her as it is for yourself and it is not good for cats
anymore than it is good for you.
Fact: cows do not
naturally produce milk on a daily basis. They like
humans only produce milk when they give birth to their
calves and, like humans and all other mammals, that milk
ceases to flow when her calf is weaned and until the
next time she is pregnant she produces no more milk.
Fact: synthetic growth hormones fed to cows have been
linked to infertility in men, who as young boys drank lots
of milk. Sadly erroneous advice was given many years ago
when everyone was advised to drink one paint of milk per
day and milk was given out freely at school to every
child.
Fact: Contrary to
popular belief milk does not protect against bone
fractures; milk's high protein content leeches calcium
from the bones. Women who drank 3 glasses of milk a day
had more fractures than those who rarely drank milk.
Calcium is needed
of course for sound bones and teeth, particularly when
we are young and again when are old, however calcium may
be derived from other sources. Including: Dried figs,
Green leafy vegetables: spring greens, kale, broccoli,
parsley, baked beans, oranges, white flour are good sources. Food containing fair
amounts of calcium includes brown bread, brazil nuts,
dried apricots, French beans and sesame seeds. For more
comprehensive information concerning calcium intake
please refer to the Vegan Societies calcium fact sheet Calcium
- Vegan Society
Contrary to popular
belief it is now known that Milk consumption is
not necessary to prevent osteoporosis, in fact it
is quite possible that in stead of preventing this
condition milk may be one of the causative factors in
its development Research has revealed that
in populations that consume the most milk, the incidence
of osteoporosis is the highest.
In a well researched
and comprehensive article in the Guardian News paper
Anne Karpf meticulously examines the problems with milk.
She explores the possibility that our need for calcium
is simply a myth
“American women
are among the biggest consumers of calcium in the world,
yet still have one of the highest levels of osteoporosis
in the world…Most Chinese people eat and drink no dairy
products and consume only half the calcium of
Americans…yet osteoporosis is uncommon in China despite
an average life expectancy of 70.”
To the milk
critics, the shibboleth that osteoporosis is caused by
calcium deficiency is one of the great myths of our time
(each side accuses the other of myth peddling). Mark
Hegsted, a retired Harvard professor of nutrition, has
said, "To assume that osteoporosis is due to calcium
deficiency is like assuming that infection is due to
penicillin deficiency." In fact, the bone loss and
deteriorating bone tissue that take place in
osteoporosis are due not to calcium deficiency but
rather to its resorption: it's not that our bodies don't
get enough calcium, rather that they excrete too much of
what they already have. So we need to find out what it
is that's breaking down calcium stores in the first
place, to the extent that more than one in three British
women now suffers from osteoporosis.
The most important culprit is almost certainly the
overconsumption of protein. High-protein foods such as
meat, eggs and dairy make excessive demands on the
kidneys, which in turn leach calcium from the body. One
solution, then, isn't to increase our calcium intake,
but to reduce our consumption of protein, so our bones
don't have to surrender so much calcium. Astonishingly,
according to this newer, more critical view, dairy
products almost certainly help to cause, rather than
prevent, osteoporosis.
Do take time to
read the complete article
Dairy monsters: Just how healthy is milk? | Life and
style | The Guardian Part 1
Dairy Monsters: part two | Life and style | The Guardian
More milk facts
"Yes... milk is
Mother Nature's "perfect food" ...for a calf... until it
is weaned.
Everything you know about cow's milk and dairy is
probably part of a Dairy industry MYTH.
Cow's milk is an unhealthy fluid from diseased animals
that contains a wide range of dangerous and
disease-causing substances that have a cumulative
negative effect on all who consume it.
MILK'S BASIC CONTENTS
*ALL* cow's milk (regular and 'organic') has 59 active
hormones, scores of allergens, fat and cholesterol.
Most cow's milk has measurable quantities of herbicides,
pesticides, dioxins (up to 200 times the safe levels),
up to 52 powerful antibiotics (perhaps 53, with
LS-50), blood, pus, feces, bacteria and viruses. (Cow's
milk can have traces of anything the cow ate...
including such things as radioactive fallout from nuke
testing ... (the 50's strontium-90 problem)."
Extract from
article:
Dangers Of Milk And
Dairy Products - The Facts
By Dave Rietz
Webmaster:
Dangers Of Milk And Dairy Products - The Facts
More information from
The NOTMILK Homepage!
(MILK is a bad-news substance!)
Finally I would
like to leave you with this poignant poem
Bessie What
Happened To You?
Chalissa
A few centuries
ago
Particularly under the Eastern skies
She grazed peacefully under the sun.
Frolicked in the village pond
Walked 3 to 4 miles every day
Had her fill of grasses
Provided milk - nourishment
For the ones that took care of her!
Saved from slaughter
Written into the scriptures
Forbidden!
Died natural death.
After death she benefited the human race with leather &
buttons
Carrion usually feasted on the remains!
Modern day Bessy's plight
They don't teach compassion & humanity in MBA courses!
Bessy has no feelings
No needs
Is inanimate
Goal maximize $$$$'s
Compassion be damned!
Confined to a stall
In a barn away from sunlight
Excreta - polluta stench unbearable
Who cares!
Concrete floors - goes lame
So what - kill it!
Tail flops around
in the manure & urine
into milking apparatus.
Chop it off!
Wait! too much effort
No anesthesia just bind it
Shuts off blood supply
Painfully falls off!
Hey day for flies!!
No more prairie grass for Bessie
Mix soya bran with Chicken manure!!
Yes Chicken manure!!
She's hungry will eat it
Put lots & lots of Antibiotics
Please
continue to read the rest of this poem
cow, cows, dairy cows, Bessie, poem, poetry
The human body has no more need
for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses'
milk, or giraffes' milk.
Michael Klaper
The information
above has been gleaned from a number of sources
including those listed
below.
The websites have more information
and also actions you cant take.
References and Links :
MilkMyths.org.uk
Viva! - Vegetarians International Voice for Animals
cattle slaughter
Viva! - Vegetarians International Voice for Animals cows
Milk
GoVeg.com // Cruelty to Animals // Cows
GoVeg.com // Cruelty to Animals // Cows // Cows Used for
Their Flesh
GoVeg.com // Cruelty to Animals // Cows // Cows Used for
Their Milk
Viva! - Vegetarians International Voice for Animals
slaugher houses
The Vegetarian Society - Cattle Information Sheet
Animal Rights and Vegetarianism- Why be a vegetarian?
8 things you didnt know about milk « Lets
Do It … for South Africa!
Important please note:
I am not an
animal expert of any kind just your average person who
loves animals, all animals, and feels deeply about the
plight of many of our fellow creatures. Neither am I a
writer, or any other expert. Therefore please keep in
mind that the information included in this website has
been researched to the best of my ability and any
misinformation is quite by accident but of course
possible.
Copyright, accreditations and
other matters, please read
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