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Comment by bayesianhorse | Hacker News Reader

From the standpoint of animal welfare, I think milk and cheese are some of the least offending products. For about 7000 kilos of milk "only" one cow has to live for a year, and birth one calve. With about a 50% chance of this calve being raised for slaughter. And both cow and calve also yield meat. Compare that to the one chicken per chicken.

If you don't want to go vegan, but reduce your animal welfare "footprint", avoid meat from small animals like pigs and poultry.

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This belief is unfortunately misguided; there is much suffering involved in industrial milk production [1]. It begins with the cow being separated from its calf, usually when it is just newly born. The cow generally responds by searching frantically for its lost calf, repeatedly crying out for it until its throat becomes sore. The cow might also become sick and lose weight due to the separation. It continues with the milking process, which is painful and terrifying for the cows, as evidenced by their response. Milk-producing cows have been bred to maximize milk production, which means they have oversized udders that lead to illness. These are just a few examples of many. Generally speaking, cows in the dairy industry lead a short and exceedingly miserable life.

If the goal is to minimize suffering without going vegan, I think that wild-caught fish provide the least offending animal-based food. But wild-caught fish are generally bad from an ecological perspective.

[1] See for example http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/real-talk-milk/ , http://www.farmsanctuary.org/learn/factory-farming/dairy/ , and the documentary films Earthlings and Food Inc. A quick google search will reveal many more sources.

I've spent time at an organic dairy farm, and I was not upset by anything that I saw there. Although it's not a natural way of life for a cow, the animals were treated very well. There were some processes that cause the animals short-term pain, like removing horns to ensure they don't hurt each other, but there was definitely no long-term suffering; certainly not around the milking process.

I do completely agree that the vast majority of milk production is done in an unethical way and I find mass-produced milk to taste terrible, but I've done my research and I am satisfied that milk can be produced in a responsible way.

I consider myself somewhat of an expert on that matter, and I do believe that cows are suffering much less than pigs and chicken. And I didn't even try to judge if any of these sufferings are justified.

I stand to disagree. While animal "welfare" can be measured in individuals, we also need to consider the impact on the environment. Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p... it says that the water consumption per quantity of meat is 3-4 times lower for poultry and pork than for beef.

The environment supports many more animals that we do not eat, so resource use is more important than headcount in my opinion. You could count the number of flies that died because of industry, but what would that accomplish?

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