Which just about brings us from spring 2020 to now.
According to a quick google search, cows gestate for 9.5 months.
> then the “ideal” breeding season for spring-born calves is 9 1/2 months prior to that or beginning in April but for sure by May. [^1]
If you're planning to have baby cows in April 2020, you breed them in August 2019. By the time you find out about COVID it is already too late and you're gonna have a bunch of milk whether you want to or not.
As for what happens to the calves: they can't drink all the milk modern cows produce. Also they become big cows. Afaik we don't usually eat dairy cows because they have been selectively bred to produce ridiculous amounts of milk, but not to be tasty.
[1] https://beef-cattle.extension.org/when-exactly-is-the-beginn...
Half of them do not become big cows because male cows don't produce milk. We kill the male calves.
> Afaik we don't usually eat dairy cows
Of course we eat them. They get turned into ground and minced beef.
May have been true a few decades ago, but currently the farmers will buy “sexed” sperm (selected for females). I’ve never seen a male calf being killed for that reason.
Well they don’t turn into veal steaks by themselves do they?
If you think it's wrong that some countries kill dolphins, dogs, whales, cats, sharks, horses etc. for food or use foxes, minks, rabbits etc. for fur, you should ask yourself why cheese, milk and leather are okay.
As for fur, I'm guessing it's because a moral panic happened in the 80s and nobody really cared that much about fur, since it was a luxury item for a few, while meat, milk and leather somewhat is something that everyone pretty much still uses today worldwide.
Dogs, cats, foxes, mink and horses aren't endangered either, and the amount of meat developed countries eat is a luxury as well.
My point is, if you're offended by the way other countries treat certain animals, you should think about if your use of animal products really aligns with your core beliefs or if you're going along with what's cultural to you without really thinking about it.
I do wish we find more humane ways to industrially raise livestock. Meat is way too cheap right now and we should reduce the intensity of its production. Humans dont need to eat meat at every meal like many of us do right now.
It’s also a shame that we don’t breed dairy cows for more longevity. I’m sure they could be productive for almost all their natural lifespan if we let them.
My grandparents had a small farm mostly for family use and it wasn’t uncommon to keep a cow for 10+ years. But they were treated almost lije pets. Each cow had a name and I think they rarely had more than 10 at a time.
PS: horse burger is very tasty. I recommend trying it if you get a chance
And that's why I see no ethical issue there.
> if you're offended by the way other countries treat certain animals, you should think about if your use of animal products really aligns with your core beliefs
Being offended by something doesn't make it immoral though, it just makes it not advisable. I'm Italian and I grew up consuming rabbit meat and sometimes horse meat, my wife comes from a cultural background (Northern Thailand) where rabbit meat consumption is frowned upon, and I live in an anglophone country (Australia) where eating horse meat is taboo. So I don't consume either one of those. But I don't think it's immoral consuming them, I don't think my relatives in Italy who are still eating rabbit and horse are doing something immoral.
I don't understand where people come up with this nonsense. Do you just generalize your experience to everyone else? 68% of the world population is lactose intolerant: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28690131/
Are you definitely replying to the correct comment? I'm not advocating anything. I'm purely stating a fact that just because 68% of humanity is lactose intolerant doesn't mean 68% of humanity does not consume milk. I just said lactose free milk exists(because it does), lactose-digestion enzyme pills exist(because they do) and people with lactose intolerance can usually eat a little without suffering any bad effects(because most people can). Is stating facts propaganda now?
>> unless you had some agenda of pushing dairy
Yes you're absolutely right, my check from big milk industry will surely arrive any day now. You looked right through me.
Or maybe....you're the one with some kind of agenda here? Because I can't believe anyone would read into my comments as hard as you do. Or I don't know, do you take those simple facts as some kind of personal attack?
There is really no reason to get offended over that reality. I don't really know why those people consume milk and I was never rude enough to ask. It is their diet. But, they in fact eat it even in situations where they don't have to and go out of their way to get sorts of milk they can consume.
Can you take any guesses as to why? Do you think it might have anything to do with the colonialist attitude of "of course, everybody drinks milk!" displayed in the parent comment? Are your acquaintances in the US? Do you think it has anything to do with the $500 million spent over 20 years on "Got Milk?" propaganda?
You know that simply wanting something to be true doesn't make it so, right?
There is even a handy map.
Interestingly, they note that milk consumption is higher amongst older people. Possibly due to the crazy amount of milk propaganda historically.
I know this isn't directly related to your comment, but it was getting heated so I wanted to derail that.
* https://milkgenomics.org/article/milk-consumption-around-the...
Plus all the rest others written.
(I am lactose intolerant, and I realize the level of discomfort that people experience varies)
"Lactose malabsorption (lactase non-persistence) is not equivalent or synonymous to lactose intolerance. Lactose malabsorption in many cases will not come to clinical attention."[1]
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/how-can-you-eat-dair...
>In modern Mongolia, for example, traditional herders get more than a third of their calories from dairy products. They milk seven kinds of mammals, yielding diverse cheeses, yogurts, and other fermented milk products, including alcohol made from mare’s milk. “If you can milk it, they do in Mongolia,” Warinner says. And yet 95% of those people are lactose intolerant.
>Modern Mongolians digest dairy by using bacteria to digest lactose for them, turning milk into yogurt and cheese, along with a rich suite of dairy products unknown in the Western diet. Ancient pastoralists may have adopted similar strategies. “Control and manipulation of microbes is core to this whole transformation,” Warinner says. “There’s an intense control of microbes inside and outside their bodies that enables them to have a dairying culture.”
>That disconnect between dairy and DNA isn’t limited to Mongolia. Jessica Hendy, a co-author of the PNAS paper, recently found milk proteins on pots at Çatalhöyük in Turkey, which at 9000 years old dates to the beginnings of domestication, 4 millennia before lactase persistence appears. “There seem to be milk proteins popping up all over the place, and the wonderful cultural evolution we expected to see isn’t happening,” Collins says.
This might be uncommon, but my brother is lactose intolerant and still eats the milk products he wants, he simply doesn't mind the diarrhea that follows.
I saw this sad interaction a lot in the wild when someone at lunch at work orders a vegetarian option and someone else leaves them in absolute tatters by responding “good, I’m going to order extra meat ;)” as if anyone else feels responsible for his choices.
It was a joke my friend.
It's a website like this one, but you'll find more similar conversation to what you are looking for there.
Can you explain the joke? What was the set up? What's the punchline?
Do you genuinely not care if people are killing dolphins and whales and eating dogs though? I've no doubt some people exist that don't but I'm sure they're in the vast minority.
No, but I do genuinely not care that people are killing and eating cows and cow products though. I don't really think anything could make me care about that at this point, certainly not enough to give up meat and cheese.
So if we are making these things equivalent (which I don't believe they are), then I suppose I shouldn't care about the dolphins, whales and dogs. In order to be consistent.
I'm not making anything equivalent, I'm asking you about your beliefs and if they're well founded.
Why is it okay to slaughter and eat a cow and not a dog or a whale or a cat? Your beliefs can still be consistent if you've justified the difference to yourself. I don't think "because it's traditional" or "because we've been doing it for hundreds of years" are good ethical reasons (which other countries could make about dogs and whales) for example.
Ok you say that, but your question
> Why is it okay to slaughter and eat a cow and not a dog or a whale or a cat?
implies equivalence. Without that equivalence the answer is obvious: Because they are different. It's ok to treat different things differently.
But ok, so let's talk about equivalence. Obviously cows and whales are both mammals. Maybe that's why I should treat them the same.
So is it ok to eat non-mammals? Snakes and lizards and fish? Why? They're still animals.
So let's say it's not ok to eat animals. So we should eat plants.
Why is that ok? They're still alive. They still die when you harvest them.
Okay so it's not ok to kill and eat anything. So we starve.
Obviously this is silly and reductive and does not represent reality. We have to eat. May as well eat cow.
Why not stop at killing things that have a nervous system that clearly react with pain? Even if you want to argue plants feel pain, eating plants only is causing the least pain because animal farming requires more plants to die.
Why not? Why the fact that something stood the test of time has no value? I've seen this argument often repeated but never explained in logical terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
You can use this fallacy to justify lots of awful things humans used to do are fine.
I’m comfortable with nature. Life is cyclic and you can’t survive without other living beings.
Sold as veal I'd have guessed?