How the Dairy Industry Lies to Us
Earlier this winter, Andrew Jacobs of The New York Times asked the question “Is Dairy Farming Cruel to Cows?” In attempting to answer this, he focuses on the story of two dairy farms in upstate New York that are attempting to improve welfare standards to respond to, what Mr. Jacobs refers to as, the “growing anti-dairy movement.” In his case study of these two specific farms, Mr. Jacobs acknowledges that these models are not “easily replicable” elsewhere and will always require the slaughter of male calves, painful dehorning, repeated artificial insemination and the theft of mothers’ newborns. If even the most ‘humane’ of farming models still requires this level of suffering and is not even replicable elsewhere, then the answer to “is dairy farming cruel to cows?” must be a resounding yes.
Articles like this one are part of a much larger and incredibly successful propaganda campaign by the dairy industry to push cruelty-, health-, and green-washing campaigns. The industry has lied to us about the health implications of consuming dairy products. It has lied about endemic harm and suffering to animals. It gets away with these lies by capturing regulatory agencies, legislatures, and prosecutors to perpetuate falsehoods and artificially shelter the industry’s profit margins. These lies come at a very real cost to cows and consumers alike.
Perhaps the most widely held myth about dairy is that fluid milk is needed to grow strong bones. This of course comes from the fact that calcium assists in bone strength, and dairy milk does have calcium in it. However, this ignores the many studies that have found drinking cow’s milk to be correlated to weaker bones in the form of more fractures during adulthood and higher rates of osteoporosis. For example, a study by the Channing Laboratory at Harvard University of over 96,000 people found that the more milk consumed during teenage years, the more likely bone fractures were in adulthood.
So, while dairy milk may have calcium, it is accompanied by all manner of unhealthy baggage that can jeopardize health. Milk and cheese are leading contributors of saturated fat in the standard American diet, high consumption of which is associated with heart disease. Furthermore, there are far better plant-based sources of calcium. Seeds, nuts, legumes, and many leafy greens all contain high shares of your recommended daily intake of calcium without all of the unhealthy baggage associated with dairy.[i]
Industry works hand-in-glove with government to perpetuate health and other dairy-related myths. In the United States, the USDA’s own dairy checkoff program uses money from dairy farmers to help partner with fast food and other food service companies to push dairy products on consumers. An investigation by The New York Times found that the checkoff program spent over $12 million just on advertising a new Domino’s pizza with 40% more cheese. This USDA entity has also worked to push Taco Bell’s double steak cheese quesadilla and with McDonald’s to introduce dozens of new dairy items onto their menu. All this while the USDA is simultaneously warning Americans about the danger of over-consuming saturated fats that they themselves are directing millions of dollars to advertise.
The dairy checkoff program also works in schools across the United States to hock cheese and milk onto the nation’s youth — or in the eyes of industry: budding consumers. While many schools have banned sugary sodas, chocolate milk with double the daily recommended sugar intake for young children is sold in schools all over the country. The checkoff program has partnered with the NFL to spin chocolate milk as a “recovery drink” for children and spends over $50 million to reach children in more than 73,000 schools.
The dairy industry also partners directly with schools at the state and local level to run programs like the ‘Mobile Dairy Classroom’ — an industry-run program for students on school campuses to encourage them to drink milk. In Canada, Ontario’s public broadcaster recently announced a partnership with the Dairy Farmers of Ontario — a trade group with the single explicit goal of selling more milk — to produce “PSAs” about health eating aimed at the province’s students.
The level of salesmanship disguised as health campaigns to students is disgusting and would be unthinkable if it were any other industry. Can you imagine public-private partnerships that brought industry representatives from Marlboro or Camel into schools to “teach” children about the alleged benefits of tobacco?[ii] These programs, from pushing flavored milk drinks in schools to cheesier pizzas at Domino’s, are all efforts by an otherwise flailing industry to use its political influence to prop up its profit margins. In Canada alone, the federal government has promised $1.75 billion in direct payments to dairy farmers to make up for losses.
The other big lie told by industry, the one Mr. Jacobs article fails to truly address in his article, is that dairy farming is cruelty-free. As a former vegetarian (and a former meat eater) I understand the pull of this myth. It uses our confirmation bias to seek out affirming information and presents us with a neat and tidy explanation: you don’t have to kill a cow for milk, right?
The truth is, of course, much darker and more complicated. Simply put, dairy does involve a lot of needless murder. As Mr. Jacobs again readily acknowledges, dairy cows are sent to slaughter as soon as their milk production starts to wane, usually less than a quarter of the way into their regular lifespan. Slaughtering an animal many years before they would even grow old is the very definition of unnecessary death, and yet it happens on even the most “humane” dairy farms. Male calves suffer even worse fates, as they are most often sold to veal farms. These infants are then chained or locked in tiny crates for 18 to 20 weeks before they are slaughtered.
The suffering of veal calves is inextricably linked to dairy production because of the need to constantly artificially inseminate cows to produce milk. Many people forget this or choose to ignore it, but like all other mammals, cows only lactate when rearing their offspring. This means that dairy production always starts with a constant cycle of repeatedly inseminating cows, taking control and advantage of their female bodies simply for their reproductive capability. Newborn calves are then taken from their mother, who can be heard bellowing and crying for weeks after being separated from their stolen babies.
Many other cruel practices are commonplace in the dairy industry. For example, disbudding and dehorning are mostly limited to the dairy industry as horns have largely been bred out of beef cows. This process involves the removal of cows’ bodily appendages with searing chemicals or hot irons. Unlike antlers, a cow’s horns are full of nerves and horn tissue. Dehorning causes acute pain and bleeding and is usually done without any pain relief.
Luckily, there is a very easy way to reduce and eventually eliminate all of this unnecessary suffering and death. Plant-based milks, butters, and cheeses are now more widely available than ever. Consumption of dairy milk has been on the decline for decades, and the industry is fighting back — with the help of its allies in government — harder than ever against advances by non-dairy alternatives. Thus far, their efforts have born little fruit. Courts in the Ninth Circuit have ruled against both state and class action suits against producers of nondairy milk and butter for allegedly misguiding labeling. Continuing this trend to make dairy a thing of the past will take the work of all of us: advocates pushing for social and legislative changes, animal lawyers defending gains in court, and every one of us voting and eating in accordance with our values.
Image Source: Bloomberg
[i] It is also worth noting that in addition to being the only species to drink the milk of another, a majority of humans have an intolerance to lactose (and this intolerance is not distributed evenly across race or ethnicity).
[ii] Kelly Brownell, a psychologist who studies food policy at Yale University, has drawn the comparison between the tactics used by Big Food and Big Tobacco (e.g. denying studies showing how unhealthy their products are, marketing “healthier” options). See https://e360.yale.edu/features/food_industry_pursues_the_strategy_of_big_tobacco.
