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Dairy cows are typically slaughtered before 5 years of age and are sold as beef; at that age they are considered 'spent' and no longer meet production standards. Also, they must be forcibly impregnated in order to produce milk, and their male calves are either slaughtered for veal or raised and slaughtered for beef. Supporting the dairy industry is supporting the slaughter of cows.

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There are plenty of choices for more 'organic' and 'animal friendly' and 'cruelty free' and what have you milk. While the cheap milk is indeed farmed at high intensity and not very animal-friendly to put it mildly, it doesn't have to be that way. Whereas a burger - well you have to kill the cow to get one.

Don't kid yourself. There is no animal friendly way to produce milk on any economic scale. Even if "organic" farms didn't forcably impregnated the cows (which most of them still do), they still take away the calves and hand them over to the veal industry.

Yes yes there's always a true Scotchman argument to be made about how something isn't 'really' animal friendly, but between being butchered for meat or being milked when living on a pasture, using butter to fatten up artificial meat would be a huge improvement in animal welfare.

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