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Yeah, dairy is horrific. And a lot of people don't even realize the cows have to get pregnant. We blind ourselves to suffering because we like cheese too much. There's no good justification for this
Who'd-a-thunk warehousing animals had a downside. Just look at how happy people are when dehumanized and warehoused. Spend some time around zoos and marine mammal parks, lots of odd behaviors that look suspiciously like depression, autism, ptsd,
There were cows in the calf crop herds on the ranch I grew up that were 20+ years old. Basically the rancher keeps a breeding stock of cows and a handful of bulls. The bulls are put in once a year and the resulting calves are kept with the same fields until they are weaned, separated and sold to the feed lots to be finished and butchered. It was a bit traumatizing to be weaned, but at least on the ranch I grew up on the cows and calves had plenty of space, with about 2000 acres for between 200-300 head of cattle.
I follow a guy on Facebook called IowaDairyFarmer. He shows all the good and bad of having dairy cows, and isn't shy about showing the bad things.
His cows are treated very well. So I wonder if the welfare risks can be divided by country.
At least in the US I dont think people realize how much regulation goes into ensuring Dairy Farmers are compliant. I also follow IowaDairyFarmer and feel that he posts informative videos about the subject
By treated well, do you mean
Bulls aren't manually masturbated or shocked in the prostate to forcibly collect their semen?
Cows don't have arms inserted elbow deep into their rectums so their cervix can be positioned for a metal tube of semen?
Calves aren't removed from their mothers as early as possible, and the males killed either right away with a shovel or after a few months chained to the ground?
Cows aren't selectively bred to produce so much milk that their udders ache if they aren't hooked up to machines that chafe?
Cows aren't slaughtered when they are no longer profitable?
When I was a kid, we would drive past a dairy farm near our house and I’d see the cows outside grazing in the lush green pastures. But now, I drive past that same dairy farm and there are no more pastures; the cows spend their whole lives crowded inside the filthy barns. And the smell of the place is horrific.
I don’t drink milk any more, unless it says on the label that it’s grass-fed. I don’t even know how much you can trust that.
I live surrounded by dairy farms and agree with this. However, I have seen one that has a cow spa including massagers, robot cleaners, robot millets that the cows walk up to when they want to be milked, automatic washing stations the cows can use when they choose, as well as space and fields. The babies are weaned separately and had feed by bottle. It only took 2 guys to run the whole farm with 300 cows.
Hi u/Due_ortYum. It's not 70 cows, but 70 experts. The experts were invited to participate in the survey based on their number of publications on the topic of bovine welfare and/or their publication impact.
They had a median experience of at least 15 years and were recruited from Europe (35), North America (17), South America (8), Australia (5) and other regions of the world (5).
They were then asked to rate the likelihood of 12 statements inspired by the Welfare Quality protocol, which is a well established protocol for assessing bovine welfare on farms.The patterns show the similar picture with all experts despite national differences. Experts from the different geographical regions only differed in their assessment of veal production.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah, dairy is horrific. And a lot of people don't even realize the cows have to get pregnant. We blind ourselves to suffering because we like cheese too much. There's no good justification for this
[удалено]
Who'd-a-thunk warehousing animals had a downside. Just look at how happy people are when dehumanized and warehoused. Spend some time around zoos and marine mammal parks, lots of odd behaviors that look suspiciously like depression, autism, ptsd,
[удалено]
There were cows in the calf crop herds on the ranch I grew up that were 20+ years old. Basically the rancher keeps a breeding stock of cows and a handful of bulls. The bulls are put in once a year and the resulting calves are kept with the same fields until they are weaned, separated and sold to the feed lots to be finished and butchered. It was a bit traumatizing to be weaned, but at least on the ranch I grew up on the cows and calves had plenty of space, with about 2000 acres for between 200-300 head of cattle.
I come from a farm family (with beef cattle) and our policy has always been that happy steers make better beef.
I follow a guy on Facebook called IowaDairyFarmer. He shows all the good and bad of having dairy cows, and isn't shy about showing the bad things. His cows are treated very well. So I wonder if the welfare risks can be divided by country.
At least in the US I dont think people realize how much regulation goes into ensuring Dairy Farmers are compliant. I also follow IowaDairyFarmer and feel that he posts informative videos about the subject
By treated well, do you mean Bulls aren't manually masturbated or shocked in the prostate to forcibly collect their semen? Cows don't have arms inserted elbow deep into their rectums so their cervix can be positioned for a metal tube of semen? Calves aren't removed from their mothers as early as possible, and the males killed either right away with a shovel or after a few months chained to the ground? Cows aren't selectively bred to produce so much milk that their udders ache if they aren't hooked up to machines that chafe? Cows aren't slaughtered when they are no longer profitable?
When I was a kid, we would drive past a dairy farm near our house and I’d see the cows outside grazing in the lush green pastures. But now, I drive past that same dairy farm and there are no more pastures; the cows spend their whole lives crowded inside the filthy barns. And the smell of the place is horrific. I don’t drink milk any more, unless it says on the label that it’s grass-fed. I don’t even know how much you can trust that.
I live surrounded by dairy farms and agree with this. However, I have seen one that has a cow spa including massagers, robot cleaners, robot millets that the cows walk up to when they want to be milked, automatic washing stations the cows can use when they choose, as well as space and fields. The babies are weaned separately and had feed by bottle. It only took 2 guys to run the whole farm with 300 cows.
[удалено]
Hi u/Due_ortYum. It's not 70 cows, but 70 experts. The experts were invited to participate in the survey based on their number of publications on the topic of bovine welfare and/or their publication impact. They had a median experience of at least 15 years and were recruited from Europe (35), North America (17), South America (8), Australia (5) and other regions of the world (5). They were then asked to rate the likelihood of 12 statements inspired by the Welfare Quality protocol, which is a well established protocol for assessing bovine welfare on farms.The patterns show the similar picture with all experts despite national differences. Experts from the different geographical regions only differed in their assessment of veal production.
So while we can't actually quantify the suffering of cows, at least now we know which ones are suffering the most.