This is the dark secret that the dairy industry doesn’t want you to know about.
Not all photos need to be graphic to be moving or to make a point, and we’re thankful that there’s one everyone can stomach looking at that still brings awareness to a huge issue.
The issue at hand is the dairy industry’s association and cooperation with veal farms.
The above image might seem vague and almost surreal, but inside all of those crates are newborn calves that were taken from their mourning mother just one hour after they were birthed.
Credit: Shutterstock
The new mother cows only had time to lick them, clean up the birth, and initially bond with them before the calves were torn from their mothers. Neither of them will ever see each other again.
Normally, calves would stay with their mothers until they are weaned off of their milk, which could take anywhere from three to eight months. With this horrible practice at dairy farms, the mothers have been documented as bellowing for days and weeks as they call out for their calf.
Farm Sanctuary explains on its website,
“Like all mammals, dairy cows must be impregnated in order to produce milk. Cows in the dairy industry spend their lives in a constant cycle of impregnation, birth, and milking with just a few short months of rest between pregnancies.”
Credit: Shutterstock
This means that the baby cows are merely a byproduct of the dairy farm’s core goal, and since the boys are even more useless than the girl calves, all of the boys are then raised in these huts until they are slaughtered to become veal. Even girl calves are taken from their mothers because no calf is allowed to take the mother’s milk, since every drop the baby drinks is wasted profit.
In the huts at the veal farm, they are chained and unable to move very far to keep their meat “tender” until they can be killed in about six weeks.
Credit: Shutterstock
Life for these sensitive animals who can form friendships and remember the past is grim and inhumane, but even living six weeks is something that many boy cows aren’t allowed. In some instances, the boys are removed from their mother and subsequently shot dead within a few days of their birth.
All so dairy farms can continue to churn a profit and not waste money on male cows. Learn how to cut down on your dairy diet here, as every little bit helps.
What are your thoughts on this practice? Please share this article and comment your thoughts below!
This article (This One Photo Shows How Consuming Dairy Products Actually DOES Hurt Cows) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com
Disgusting. Totally. Disgusting. Glad i. Stopped eating beal a long time ago but. Still. Many. Dont stop. Veal parmigiani. Is. A. Hit in italian restaurants. Disgusting.
Ok calm down peta.
While I don’t eat veal, and a minimal amount of dairy, this seems a very bias artical, I see animals that for the most part are cared and looked after. By making comments like “torn from their mothers” seems written for shock value.
While I’m sure your intent is to shine a light on what at time seems like a cruel practice, this seems like the lesser of many evils with in the “meat manufacturing industry” chicken factory farming for one.
its not right to keep them chained up. im not a city boy and raised my own animals and know it can be done. look at sustainable farming and joe salitan. he knows how to do it and make a profit.
pure energy and consciousness help understand and live an healthy life with all other beings species
i say its sick. they are only babies. they should be able to be with thier mom. they are innacent creatures and do not deserve to be treated like this. I hate veal and will never eat it. i understand that god put cows and chickens and other animals on this earth for us to eat. but damn at least let them live a nice normal life before you kill them. damn the poor calves didn’t have to chance at a life at all. and i think that is cold hearted and cruel.
We’re at the top of the food chain and it’s our ‘duty’ to eat every living thing to sustain our species… Until another species comes along to consume our own, we’re merely a virus on this rock called Earth.
Suck it up! Eat, drink, puke and eat some more!
What is disgusting is the the distortion of reality this article pretends is truth. And the third party ad sites that this website links to without consent. All rubbish, please use your brain!
No “god” put those cows, chickens, dogs or sheep here for us, humans developed domesticated animals from their wild ancestors.
Who told you that? Whoever did was wrong!
If you think these conditions for veal calf’s is bad, I’ve seen much worse! At least those poor calfs can move around, lie down & turn around, a calf in a calf crate can’t do any of those things.
Yes it is CRUEL to take a calf from it’s mother, it needs that first milk & who would want to eat a sickly, weak anemic calf anyhow?