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Pick one (piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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[–] 4 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Vegan question. I’ve been to dairy farms now where the cows aren’t forced to be milked but have automated milking stalls they can choose to walk into.

Could that milk be considered vegan if the cows were making a feee choice to be milked?

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    Good question! On the surface, it may look like these cows are happily giving away their extra milk, until you consider the factors of the situation:

    • Cows, like other mammals, produce milk to feed their offspring. Dairy cows need to be regularly impregnated, generally through artificial insemination, in order to keep up milk production.
    • Since the newborn calves would otherwise drink their own mother's milk (leaving less for the dairy industry), industry practice is to separate them as soon as possible. Dairy cows have been observed mourning their lost calves.
    • Dairy cows have been selectively bred to produce much more milk than their closest natural ancestors. This results in higher rates of mastitis, as well as pain and discomfort from the sheer volume of milk production.

    These cows are "freely" choosing to be milked because they've been bred to produce painful amounts, and they no longer have calves to drink it.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Good points. I think people should live with cows and horses to appreciate how they are. Did you know that cows seem to have friends? In a herd cows will frequently pair off and spend the majority of their time with their chosen friend.

    Beautiful animals, having a big cow come up and want to spend time with you is a special feeling.

    Thanks for your answer. It seems kinda impossible to have animal derived food stuffs at any scale that would be voluntary for the animal. If you are open to more questions I’m curious about other animal products that one could consider less harmful.

    The big one I’m curious about is honey. My mother in law got into beekeeping and the bees seemed more than happy to produce an endless supply of honey and didn’t seem any worse off for her taking the excess. Is honey vegan or is that also considered an animal products?

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Most people, including myself consider honey to not be vegan. I'll admit that it's a lower moral priority for me, since insects very likely have a much lower capacity for sentience than mammals, birds and aquatic creatures. My specific issues with honey production are both moral and environmental:

    • Artificial insemination typically requires the crushing of drones to extract semen.
    • It's pretty common practice to clip the wings of queens to keep them from leaving the hive.
    • Transporting bees and hives increases the spread of diseases which can affect wild insects.
    • Western Honeybees are invasive to many parts of the world, including the Americas.
    • Studies have shown that Honeybees disrupt local plant/pollinator networks by outcompeting local pollinators.

    This article goes into more detail: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-honey-bees/

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Wow, thanks, didn't know most of that before.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Yeah it kind of blew my mind when I started looking into it. Pretty much everyone assumes that beekeeping is beneficial to the environment. There's a rather famous quote among ecologists, "Conserving honeybees to save pollinators is like conserving chickens to save the birds."

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Cool well I appreciate your answers, all things I could Google but it’s nice to hear from someone directly their thoughts on it.

    I’m not vegan myself, but starting to go low meat. Ive lived around farm animals some and have a great deal of respect for them and consider them to be sentient beings with feelings and consciousness.

    Respect for vegans even if I haven’t gone that way yet. Have a lovely rest of your day! :)

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    No. Definitely not. Why does a cow lactate? Because she's got a baby. Why did she have a baby? Because she was inseminated against her will. What happens to the male babies? I let you fill in this one. There's no cruelty-free milk but plant based milk.

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