Watching this video from the dairy industry in England is painful, but what’s even more disturbing is knowing that what it’s not an exception. It’s the rule. This is the dairy industry. And to make milk, animals suffer.
To produce dairy, mother cows are forcibly separated from their babies. We take the milk their bodies produce, meant to nourish their calves. But we don’t just take it. We steal it. It’s that simple. And it’s that unfair.
I struggle when people casually say, “But I love cheese,” or dismiss plant-based alternatives by claiming, “Oat milk just isn’t the real thing.”
So let me say it plainly: for that cheese, for that glass of milk you love, animals suffer. Babies are violently ripped away from their mothers shortly after birth. Again and again.
Calves kicked and moms beaten
In undercover footage obtained by Surge, a grassroots animal rights organization, we see horrifying scenes: newborn calves kicked and punched by farmers, mother cows beaten with pipes and crutches as they desperately try to protect their babies. The mothers cry out, powerless to stop the abuse.
This is not okay. It is not acceptable. We wouldn’t tolerate this cruelty if it were happening to dogs, cats, or humans. Why do we allow it when it happens to cows?
A mother cow, like any mother, forms a deep emotional bond with her child. Cows carry their babies for nine months, just like humans do. They lick their newborns clean.
A mother cow wants to nurse her calf. But instead, she is forced to stand by as her child is taken, and she is left to produce milk for human consumption until her own body gives out.
“Mother cows have an incredibly deep, loving connection to their children, just as we humans do to our children. Once separated from their mothers, female dairy calves face the same fate as their mothers, a life of artificial insemination and stolen children before their life ends at the slaughterhouse”, the team of Surge explains.
Surge is founded by Ed Winters, known online as Earthling Ed.
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