Day #20 and let's talk about dairy...

Welcome to Day #20 and I am feeling a lot better today following yesterday's post.  We had burritos for tea and if that isn't enough to cheer you up, I don't know what is.  Nats swaps out the sour cream for vegan cream cheese and the guac for chopped avocado and, you know, it works!  I even started singing that Despacito song by Justin Bieber ft. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee but changed the lyrics to;

"I like burritos, when they're made by my senorito..."

Go on, sing it.  You know you want to.  I had more lyrics last night but it was spur of the moment and, whilst Nats almost choked for laughing, I can't remember them now.

Anyway, the dairy industry!

There's been adverts flying around recently claiming that humane milk is a myth and that it should not be bought.  The precise wording was;

"I went vegan the day I visited a dairy.  The mothers, still bloody from birth, searched and called frantically for their babies.  Their daughters, fresh from their mothers' wombs but separated from then, trembled and cried piteously, drinking milk from rubber teats on the wall instead of their mothers' nurturing bodies.  All because humans take their milk.  Their sons are slaughtered for their flesh and they themselves are slaughtered at 6 years.  Their natural lifespan is 25 years.  I could no longer participate in that.  Can you?"

Now, the advert paints a grim picture but, you know, how accurate is it?  Really?  Obviously, calves are separated from their mothers earlier than if they weren't separated from their mothers at all but DEFRA have standards on this.  Whether everybody adheres to those standards, well they probably don't, but you can't tar everybody with the same brush.  If you accept the notion of free range chickens, then you can accept the notion of free range cows which, by the way, is a thing.  But let's look at it another way, rather than going into the correct practices of breeding and raising dairy cows of which I am no expert.

Let's all go vegan and ditch the dairy.  Yay!  But wait, what are the knock on effects?

Well firstly, the dairy herd would lose all value and would stop being bred.  There's no profit in milk if nobody buys it and, if anything, you'd end up losing money on supporting things which are making you no money.  You can't really sell them on as quality beef but can perhaps move them on as cheaper meat, but only once!  That's not sustainable.  You can't keep them because nobody's keeping cattle as pets and, if you're having to turn your farm over to arable farming, you'll need all your available space to even try and make the same profit.  Therefore, you can't give the cattle anywhere to graze out the rest of their lives in happy bliss.  Best to just slaughter them I support.  Surely someone will buy cheap meat?

There we are, the dairy herd is gone.  "E's passed on!  This dairy herd is no more!  It has ceased to be!  It's expired and gone to meet it's maker!  It's a stiff.  It's bereft of life, it rests in peace.  If you hadn't nailed it to the pasture, it'd be pushing up daisies!  It's metabolic processes are no 'istory.  It's off the twig!  It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!!

THIS IS AN EX-DAIRY HERD!!"

Better start on the beef cows now!  Same thing, let's stop buying beef and go vegan.  Everybody, all of us.  Now the beef herd has been sold on for beef too and the land turned over to crop.  Turns a little more profit but still, it's not very sustainable.

The older cows aren't bringing everything in but they'll die in a few years anyway but, either way, if the advert is to be believed, even a young cow kept for nostalgia reasons will be dead inside of 25 years, especially with little to nowhere to graze.

RIP Cattle 6000BC - 2042AD (at the latest!).  I suppose 8042 years is pretty good innings.

Right, sheep next!  I won't go through it all but meat, wool, etc. is off the cards and the land is needed for crops.  They can die too.  Let's ignore the fact that we have a moral obligation as humans to at least shear sheep otherwise they'll suffocate under their own wool (and I know we bred that into them but you can't change the past!)

Cows all dead:  check!

Sheep all dead:  check!

Pigs now.  Then Chickens, etc.  After all, you're not actually allowed to keep these animals for commodity reasons so keeping these as pets is out.  Can't eat the meat.  Can't eat the eggs.  No value whatsoever in them being alive.

Cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, etc. all dead:  check!

Now horses.  Horse racing is out, as is keeping them for commodity reasons.  No longer allowed as pets.  No value in horses so no one will breed them and all the land is given over to crop farming because that's all we're eating. In fact, if you're not allow pets, anything domesticated is out. We'll have to turn all the cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs (they'll be the first to die in the first hard winter), etc. out onto the street.  Bedlam!!! Absolute bedlam.

So, to summarise, we have no pets and no farm animals.  These species will either die out or thrive over time but the farm animals, having been domesticated for so long and with nowhere to graze will almost certainly die.

I'm sorry but the world turning completely vegan has just wiped out entire species of animals!  Entire species.  Was it humane?  Well the slaughtered ones, perhaps, but the pets that were turfed out onto the streets have either thrived or died out/ bred themselves out/ or start carrying diseases.  With not enough grass for the herbivores, they'll die out and with no meat for the carnivores, they'll turn on humans.  We'll have to start culling them for our own safety.

In conclusion, the world has gone absolutely mad with humans having to eat almost constantly to get the energy necessary to survive and entire species dying out.

In essence, the snowball effect of the entire world population becoming vegan would be catastrophic to the animals which we were trying to protect by becoming vegan.  That is the irony of all this.  If you want to follow the vegan lifestyle, by all means, please do so.  It is your choice and nobody should be made to feel answerable for that choice.  You shouldn't be victimised or targeted for it.  But conversely, don't victimise and target people who don't follow the lifestyle because that's a level of hypocrisy which is, frankly, the reason the lifestyle get's a bad rep.

The dairy industry can be humane.  It's a sustainable product.  Eggs are sustainable.  Wool is sustainable.  Honey is sustainable.  Don't try to get rid of it completely.  Work to help manage it and make sure it remains as humane as possible.  We'll tackle palm oil at the same time.  And everything else.  Let's all work together because that is the only way to reach universal acceptance.

Apologies, this was a long one.  It kind of snowballed a bit.  

Disclaimer:  This post was not meant to offend but if you are offended, that too is your choice.  This post was meant to shock and be slightly sensationalist, much like the 'humane milk is a myth' advert.  In the interests of balance, this was to look at the other side of the 'World Going Vegan' movement and what the knock on effects may be.