TBF lot of the meat replacements are plagued by similar problems. [1]
[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/impossible-and-beyond-ho...
The article does not mention cow milk's health implications, and only focuses on debunking Oatly's alleged health benefits. This creates the same "Obscure the Truth" effect the article opens with, giving the impression that there's nothing wrong with cow milk.
If both options are equally unhealthy (which is at the minimum the biased impression the article gives by not discussing cow milk), at the minimum the moral one should be chosen.
Also cows milk has pretty grave health implications for the cows
I wonder how that logic applies to humans born into living in rough countries, would vegans rather they would not exist at all?
It’s not like a dairy cow has a life of eternal suffering after all. It eats, grazes, rests and socializes. It does cow things.
Mega Farms are mostly an American issue. I do not support them at all.
This is far from a US-only problem.
[1] https://www.liberation.fr/france/2018/06/04/porcs-bovins-vol...
Yes, some farms may operate in line with an acceptable standard of ethics, but for many people, it is easier to live a vegan lifestyle than to carefully ensure that all their dairy is ethically sourced.
I would argue that no existence is better than existence filled with endless misery, agony and pain.
Factory farms are a disgrace to humanity. It is my opinion that until we develop enough compassion to see this and stop, humans have no hope of creating lasting peace amongst each other. Our morality has a deadly wound at its core, and it’s rotting away at our souls.
The answer to all of these is obviously no. So why do you make the case for cows?
The dairy cows are also not quite so happy, I think. Mastitis is a potentially fatal disease of the udder, usually caused by bacteria entering the teat; many of the practices on a dairy farm make this far more likely, and while of course the farmers are doing all they can to stop it, it is still one of the biggest issues in the industry, and it seems that some level of mastitis is expected in all dairy herds [2]. It is perhaps a side note to the animal wellfare aspect, but the use of antibiotics is a big part of the mitigations, and seems to be administered as a matter of course; this is an issue because it promotes antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which has implications for humans too.
There are other wellfare issues around overwork of cows from producing much larger amounts of milk than they would to feed a calf, whether grains are a healthy food compared to grasses, and even mental health issues such as separating cows from their calves and whether they have enough access to the outdoors.
I've tried to select links that are balanced and non-hyperbolic, but it's tricky to do. Like I said, I recommend more research but try not to be too turned off the hyperbolic articles on both sides. Articles from vegans are often under-researched and manipulative, but if you dig around you'll find that many of the issues they discuss are real. On the other hand, farmers are of course not animal hating devils and so write to defend themselves and their livelihood, but they can often go the other way and underplay the issues that are there.
And finally, animal wellfare is not the only argument for veganism, because livestock has an environmental impact comparable to the transport industry [3].
[1] https://www.dairy.com.au/dairy-matters/you-ask-we-answer/wha...
[2] https://www.pubs.ext.vt.edu/404/404-233/404-233.html [3] https://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0
The article links to an entire other article discussing cow milk's health implications.
> If both options are equally unhealthy (which is at the minimum the biased impression the article gives by not discussing cow milk), at the minimum the moral one should be chosen.
Cow's milk and oat milk aren't the only two alternatives, though. Milk substitutes abound, some of them having much better health and moral implications (and as discussed in this thread, milk substitutes can be made at home).
The HFCS in every milk substitute that sells is the ultimate subsidy crop. Soy and rice are as well. Dairy isn’t profitable for farmers and is rapidly declining as beverage giants and more politically powerful agriculture interests push their policy goals.
The environmental arguments aren’t very convincing to me. I grew up in an agricultural area where dairy was king and there was a diversified crop economy. Now it’s corn+fertilizer. Carbon impact may be lower, but the impact on the environment is more than carbon. Water depletion in the Midwest, pollution from runoff and over utilization and other factors matter too.
I don’t really see how water depletion is a relevant issue when most cows are being fed grain and soy.
Vegans probably ignore the harms of monoculture in their arguments. But a lot of meat eaters like to point to studies of how cattle and sheep can graze on land that can’t support other agriculture. Sure, but what % of cattle are actually raised that way? How much does a burger or gallon of milk cost when it’s grass fed.
There’s lots of milk substitutes that aren’t as bad for you as Oatly.
I read the comparison to milk as just a comparison to the baseline or what Oatly wants to taste like, not as an endorsement of cow milk.
After a bit of research just now, though, there don't seem to be many credible claims of commercial Almond Milk's chemical processing being very scary (at least compared to Oatly, which also has a few additives) so that doesn't seem too problematic to me.
This article discusses the environmental impact of various milk alternatives:
https://medium.com/@tabitha.whiting/what-milk-should-you-buy....
> Greenhouse gas emissions: a 200ml glass of oat milk is responsible for around 0.18kg of CO2e. That’s slightly more than almond milk, but less than soy or cow’s milk.
> Swedish oat milk producer Oatly put the greenhouse gas emissions of a litre of their oat milk at 0.34kg, which is a lot less than the general estimate above of 0.18kg per 200ml
> Water: a litre of oat milk needs about 48 litres of water produce. In terms of water, then, oat milk is much lower impact than other milks.
In comparison, a liter of almond milk needs 386 liters of water to produce, and cow's milk, 1016, as per https://treadingmyownpath.com/2017/04/20/is-almond-milk-bad-....
The takeaway for me is that I might prefer oat milk to almond milk for "health/eco impact" reasons by a very narrow margin, but would strongly prefer either to cow's milk for those reasons.
I guess it still contains oat sugars though, at 3.2g per 100ml (of 7g carbs per 100ml)
Currently I rotate through Oatly, Califa farms, and Silk oat milks depending on what's available.
The water footprint of almond milk is just mind-blowing. I can't fathom ripping out other productive agriculture so that we can suck up more water than other crops just to sell almonds overseas and turn it into.. milk.
Although some point out that any plant-based milk is significantly better for the environment than mammal milk:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/28/what-pla...
I think they suck in coffee (so does Oatly) but they are good for cereal or smoothies or just liquid protein.
Almond and coconut milk have very limited amounts of protein.
Are you referring to the normal Oatly or the Barista version? Because the normal one doesn't work for coffee, but the latter is the best coffee milk I've had. I used to use real cream but actually now prefer that Oatly, it's that good.
This is kind a red herring. Cow's milk should be irrelevant because you don't have to choose between the two. You can leave both out if you have moral reasons to avoid cow's milk and health reasons to avoid oat milk.
As it happens, though, unsweetened almond milk does seem to have much less sugar – 0.2g by one measure I found (another just says 2g carbs of which 1g is fiber) and a glycemic index of 25 (low).
So it is a bit surprising that the author didn't make this comparison – it's much more favorable to his point.