Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
It certainly makes for tastier steaks. Or are we deluding ourselves there too?
Do angry vegans turn you against going vegan?
- Thread starter Watermelon Man
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PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
Slaughter-free milk is great for cows, but not the environment
If you don’t eat beef because you feel sorry for those cows in Chick-fil-A ads, then you probably shouldn’t drink milk either. The typical male calf born to a dairy cow becomes veal. The typical female is milked for five years—a quarter of her natural lifetime—then sent to the abattoir to become pet food or low-grade hamburger meat. Elsie the Cow, Borden Dairy Company’s famous cartoon logo, is smiling only because she doesn’t realize that she’s about to get euthanized with a cattle gun.
Yet if you’re an ethical vegetarian who still can’t bear to give up milk, you now have another option: slaughter-free dairy, which comes from farms where cows never get killed. Since 2011, the UK-based Ahimsa Dairy has offered slaughter free-milk and cheese to customers in London. In February, Pennsylvania’s Gita Nagari Creamery, which has supplied no-kill milk to the local Hare Krishna community for many years, began offering it to the public through subscription and mail order—for a whopping $10 a gallon. The price includes a $2.50 cow retirement fee and $1.50 for “boy calf care.” Less than half of its 60-head herd gets milked; the rest of the animals pull plows or spend their golden years lackadaisically chomping grass.
“For us, the cows or oxen or bulls are seen as extended family members,” says Pari Jata, the co-president of Gita Nagari Creamery. “It’s very important for us to protect them in their retirement. We take care of them just as one would take care of elderly parents in their old age.”
The slaughter-free milk movement takes its cues from India, where many vegetarian Hindus drink milk but consider cows sacred animals that should never be consumed for meat. Yet increasing numbers of Gita Nagari and Ahimsa customers are Westerners who eschew meat for ethical reasons. Both dairies have considered selling their milk in stores; Ahimsa is in talks with a major retailer.
As vegetarianism gains popularity, slaughter-free milk could become a bona fide food trend—but there’s a catch: It might take a toll on the environment. Cows are already the nation’s single largest source of methane, a greenhouse gas produced by oil extraction, decomposing trash, and the guts of grazing animals that’s as much as 105 times more potent than carbon dioxide. A single cow farts and belches enough methane to match the carbon equivalent of the average car. According to a 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, the world’s 1.4 billion cows produce 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases—more than the entire transportation sector. Since the turn of the 19th century, global methane emissions have increased by more than 150 percent, and cows are largely to blame.
If all dairies became slaughter-free, we’d need three to four times as many dairy cows to produce the same amount of milk, which would mean adding at least 27 million additional cows to our herds. Those added cows would each year produce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to four large coal-fired power plants. We’d also need more meat cows to keep up with the demand for products such as veal and dog food. Pasturing all of these cows would displace wildlife or agricultural crops, straining biodiversity and increasing food prices.
Jata knows there’s a potential for the slaughter-free milk trend to go bad—just like the craze for tofu and soymilk contributed to the spread of soybean plantations in South America’s rainforests, she says (though most soybeans are consumed by livestock). “Where does it end?” she asks. “For us, as a community, we bring it all back to local food sources and local practices that are self-contained but shared, so it doesn’t create this mass corporation-style approach to everything.”
Small, humane dairies can certainly find other ways to mitigate their environmental impacts. The Gita Nagari and Ahimsa dairies employ cow manure to fertilize their organic vegetables and bull power to plow their fields, avoiding carbon-intensive tractors and chemical fertilizers. And the Gita Nagari dairy uses an anaerobic digester to convert manure into a gas that residents of the dairy use for cooking—but this sort of thing would be hard to implement on a larger scale.
For Nicola Pazdzierska, the co-director of the Ahimsa Dairy Foundation, the price and environmental impact of slaughter-free milk underscores the need to rethink our relationship with dairy products. “We’re not saying more cows,” she told me. “We’re saying possibly even fewer cows, but kept in better circumstances.” She went on: “We think milk is a precious foodstuff. If you pay more for it, you value it more. You use it more thoughtfully. It should be treated with respect.”
If you don’t eat beef because you feel sorry for those cows in Chick-fil-A ads, then you probably shouldn’t drink milk either. The typical male calf born to a dairy cow becomes veal. The typical female is milked for five years—a quarter of her natural lifetime—then sent to the abattoir to become pet food or low-grade hamburger meat. Elsie the Cow, Borden Dairy Company’s famous cartoon logo, is smiling only because she doesn’t realize that she’s about to get euthanized with a cattle gun.
Yet if you’re an ethical vegetarian who still can’t bear to give up milk, you now have another option: slaughter-free dairy, which comes from farms where cows never get killed. Since 2011, the UK-based Ahimsa Dairy has offered slaughter free-milk and cheese to customers in London. In February, Pennsylvania’s Gita Nagari Creamery, which has supplied no-kill milk to the local Hare Krishna community for many years, began offering it to the public through subscription and mail order—for a whopping $10 a gallon. The price includes a $2.50 cow retirement fee and $1.50 for “boy calf care.” Less than half of its 60-head herd gets milked; the rest of the animals pull plows or spend their golden years lackadaisically chomping grass.
“For us, the cows or oxen or bulls are seen as extended family members,” says Pari Jata, the co-president of Gita Nagari Creamery. “It’s very important for us to protect them in their retirement. We take care of them just as one would take care of elderly parents in their old age.”
The slaughter-free milk movement takes its cues from India, where many vegetarian Hindus drink milk but consider cows sacred animals that should never be consumed for meat. Yet increasing numbers of Gita Nagari and Ahimsa customers are Westerners who eschew meat for ethical reasons. Both dairies have considered selling their milk in stores; Ahimsa is in talks with a major retailer.
As vegetarianism gains popularity, slaughter-free milk could become a bona fide food trend—but there’s a catch: It might take a toll on the environment. Cows are already the nation’s single largest source of methane, a greenhouse gas produced by oil extraction, decomposing trash, and the guts of grazing animals that’s as much as 105 times more potent than carbon dioxide. A single cow farts and belches enough methane to match the carbon equivalent of the average car. According to a 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, the world’s 1.4 billion cows produce 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases—more than the entire transportation sector. Since the turn of the 19th century, global methane emissions have increased by more than 150 percent, and cows are largely to blame.
If all dairies became slaughter-free, we’d need three to four times as many dairy cows to produce the same amount of milk, which would mean adding at least 27 million additional cows to our herds. Those added cows would each year produce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to four large coal-fired power plants. We’d also need more meat cows to keep up with the demand for products such as veal and dog food. Pasturing all of these cows would displace wildlife or agricultural crops, straining biodiversity and increasing food prices.
Jata knows there’s a potential for the slaughter-free milk trend to go bad—just like the craze for tofu and soymilk contributed to the spread of soybean plantations in South America’s rainforests, she says (though most soybeans are consumed by livestock). “Where does it end?” she asks. “For us, as a community, we bring it all back to local food sources and local practices that are self-contained but shared, so it doesn’t create this mass corporation-style approach to everything.”
Small, humane dairies can certainly find other ways to mitigate their environmental impacts. The Gita Nagari and Ahimsa dairies employ cow manure to fertilize their organic vegetables and bull power to plow their fields, avoiding carbon-intensive tractors and chemical fertilizers. And the Gita Nagari dairy uses an anaerobic digester to convert manure into a gas that residents of the dairy use for cooking—but this sort of thing would be hard to implement on a larger scale.
For Nicola Pazdzierska, the co-director of the Ahimsa Dairy Foundation, the price and environmental impact of slaughter-free milk underscores the need to rethink our relationship with dairy products. “We’re not saying more cows,” she told me. “We’re saying possibly even fewer cows, but kept in better circumstances.” She went on: “We think milk is a precious foodstuff. If you pay more for it, you value it more. You use it more thoughtfully. It should be treated with respect.”
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
Even if that were true (and I don't believe I have), then the sensible thing to do would be to correct whatever you believe was incorrect. Alternatively you can make a bitchy snide comment out of the blue and then go back into hiding.
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
...and here comes the white knight.
How's the vegan activism going?
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
That's all you've done on this thread!!!
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
Aren't there any more cry baby maidens that need rescuing?
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
You should lead by example, but appear to prefer the "bitchy snide comment" side of things.
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
"Out of sight out of mind" indeed. That also applies to other aspects of modern life where the majority of folk would rather not know what is going on. There are some who claim that they would have no problem seeing the animals that they eat killed, however I would imagine that anybody that considers themselves compassionate and empathetic not be able to witness their deaths and remain unmoved.
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
Wait, aren't you the one that called me a dick based on your one sided and half baked assessment? In case you haven't noticed the overwhelming majority of the bitchiness has been incoming.
spanglechick
High Empress of Dressing Up
Unmoved is a broad term, though. Have I felt moved by videos of slaughterhouses? Yes. As I have when I've found a dead mouse on a trap I've set. It's a shame, but ultimately, I prioritise myself over those animals. To me, animals have fewer rights than people, and in simple terms - I'm ok with that.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I've also not seen meat eaters claiming high moral ground on this subject. I've not seen a single meat eater on this thread make any kind of serious suggestion that others should be eating meat too.
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
People set their priority bars at different levels, and I suspect that many would feel a bit more than simply "it's a shame" were they to witness the slaughter at first hand especially for the larger animals. Of course there are some who won't care at all, psychopaths would probably be amongst those who have zero empathy, however I do feel that there are plenty of people that would feel very uncomfortable seeing it, which is why I suspect that it remains out of sight.
The hoo haa when Jamie Oliver killed a lamb on tv or the gasps from the audience when he did that "truth about chicken" live show and he suffocated male chicks and electrocuted a chicken in front of them was indicative of the general discomfort imo. The curious thing with that Oliver show was that it was supposed to be publicity against factory farming, which on the face of it sounds good, except that both the factory farmed and "free range" chickens all end up in the same slaughterhouses and are killed in the same way.
As Erin said in the following video (which "nobody" is going to watch apparently,
) "there's no right way to do the wrong thing".
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I'm pretty sure that I called you a dick because you were acting like a dick.
In fact, I believe that what I said was "don't be a dick", rather than "you are a dick". Guilty conscience much?
bimble
floofy
Err.. I tried to watch your video paolo but got to the bit where she says
That's just not true, is it.
In fact , the opposite is true, consumption of meat and dairy are going up, significantly. Unless you're just interested in what's going on in Brighton, or Carlifornia I suppose.
World consumption of both is expected to continue to rise sharply as it has been for the past couple of generations.
World Agriculture: Towards 2015/2030 - An FAO perspective
Why would Erin say a thing that isn't true?
That's just not true, is it.
In fact , the opposite is true, consumption of meat and dairy are going up, significantly. Unless you're just interested in what's going on in Brighton, or Carlifornia I suppose.
World consumption of both is expected to continue to rise sharply as it has been for the past couple of generations.
World Agriculture: Towards 2015/2030 - An FAO perspective
Why would Erin say a thing that isn't true?
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
Another out of print book that I bought fairly early on was a Dick Gregory Book who died day after Brucie and the day before Jerry, but didn't get a thread.
The book I bought from him was called "Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' with Mother Nature!", which I bought on Amazon for £54 in 2001, which I've seen recently selling for $200 and will probably get more expensive that that he's passed away.
Anyway here's an extract from the book...
Sometimes the strangest things cause you to stop and think. I remember when I first started thinking about whether or not it was right to eat meat. It was on Thanksgiving Day a number of years ago. I had been drinking while I waited for the turkey to get done. By the time I was standing at the head of the table with my carving knife, I suddenly had the strangest thoughts. I got to thinking that there might be some beings on another planet somewhere who are as intelligent compared with us as we are compared with turkeys.
Now that's a disturbing thought! I could just see myself in some strange planetary oven, being roasted. It would be one thing to roast white folks brown; they'd be trying to figure out a way to "undone" us black folks. I even thought about myself lying on a platter all filled with stuffing!
Then I had visions of these beings from another planet going to the butcher shop with their meat list. I wonder what they'd call their butcher shops? They'd probably call them "folks shops." I could hear them placing an order: "Give me a half dozen Oriental knees, two Caucasian feet and twelve fresh Black lips." And the folks-shopkeeper comes back smiling and says, "These Black lips are so fresh they're still talking'." After that little fantasy, I couldn't eat my Thanksgiving dinner. But it started me thinking.
There would be a whole lot of changes in America if we Americans decided one day to start thinking. And one of the biggest and most important changes would be in the "traditional American diet. The old saying is true: You are what you eat." It would be more accurate, perhaps, to say: "You are what you assimilate." That is, your body literally is what you assimilate from the "foods"-or more frequently "things"-you eat to rebuild cells and what you eliminate as waste products of the cell-building activity as you revitalize yourself each day.
If you just stop and look around you, you can see-and many of you can feel-the sorry results of eating habits of the majority of folks in America today. Folks getting old twenty, thirty, forty or even fifty years before their time. Swollen ankles, varicose veins, pot bellies, bald heads, arthritis, rheumatism, ulcers, sinus trouble, hemorrhoids, heart trouble, liver trouble, kidney trouble, overweight, underweight, anemia, bad feet, headaches, short breath, can't sleep or can't wake up, no energy, "tired" blood, sitting in front of the television set all evening and falling asleep watching it-the list is endless and very, very familiar.
So it'd be fine if people actually did drastically reduce their milk consumption, and only drank said milk?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Top man, Dick Gregory. But what exactly is the point of this post? Many people in the US need to improve their diet. And? So what?
Your magic wand solution 'Veganism for all!' is based on what? The fact that vegans on average have fewer of these health problems than the general population? Well so do lots of other groups of people who pay close attention to their diets. The vast majority of vegans in the US are members of a small subset of the total population: the group of 'those who think carefully about their diet'. Any comparison between vegan health and that of the general meat-eating population has to account for this inbuilt bias (and others such as class) for it to have any useful meaning.
btw, there was nothing stopping you from starting an obit thread about DG. Still isn't.
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cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
andysays
Love and solidarity
I'm a little disappointed that the "angry vegans" on this thread aren't really living up to the levels of anger we were originally promised.
Some of you need to up your game a little, unless anyone here is the originator of this tweet posted by SpackleFrog on the charlottesville aftermath discussion thread
Some of you need to up your game a little, unless anyone here is the originator of this tweet posted by SpackleFrog on the charlottesville aftermath discussion thread
beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
bimble
floofy
Christ, I just went to vegan revolution's twitter, they're a proper nasty piece of shit, full on antisemite, with 63,000 followers. Reporting them, with twitter's new rules.
That's the thing, because of what they eat / don't eat they genuinely think they're living a morally superior life, whilst spending their time spewing hatefilled racist bile.
That's the thing, because of what they eat / don't eat they genuinely think they're living a morally superior life, whilst spending their time spewing hatefilled racist bile.
ddraig
kicking against the pricks...
apart from the "normal" comments the usual crap and your pseudo science of course!
ddraig
kicking against the pricks...
not indicative of all vegans of course!! just like the nazi vegan cup cake dicks!!Christ, I just went to vegan revolution's twitter, they're a proper nasty piece of shit, full on antisemite, with 63,000 followers. Reporting them, with twitter's new rules.
That's the thing, because of what they eat / don't eat they genuinely think they're living a morally superior life, whilst spending their time spewing hatefilled racist bile.
fuck them Has vegan sidekick perhaps produced anot indicative of all vegans of course!! just like the nazi vegan cup cake dicks!!
ddraig
kicking against the pricks...
dunno! ask him (hilarious edit! yawn)
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PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
Hmm...well I did say this...
...I'm not sure if you quoting me (yet again) counts as "something decent to say" but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
...I'm not sure if you quoting me (yet again) counts as "something decent to say" but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
The point was to show an extract from Dick Gregory's book. The main part that I was interested in from that extract was his thanksgiving meal vision which I found quite amusing and relevant.
I'm afraid that is yet another strawman that you've just conjured up out of nowhere. You seem to be keen on attributing claims that I haven't made to me followed by a raising of heckles, and that's one of the reasons I'd be quite happy for you to stop replying to me, something which I've indicated several times and also something which you've hinted at too, but for some reason you appear not to be able to stop yourself. I'd be quite happy to reply to reasonable posts without the false accusations and the pestering if you are able to manage that.
Obituary threads and RIP's are not usually my cup of tea, well not enough to start a thread for. I just thought that it was interesting that in the crowd that are into that sort of thing that he wasn't mentioned. tbf I didn't really know that much about him until I bought his book 16 years ago and I believe that he was much more well known in the US than over here. Besides, if I did big him up too much no doubt some idiot in this forum will go look up something he said in the past and use it to claim that vegans as anti-semitic nazis.
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
You got to laugh at the idiot meatheads who were never ever going to even think of becoming vegan, claiming that I've stopped them, lol.
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