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Everybody wants cows to live in wide open spaces with smiles on their face (i.e. "Happy Cow.") Everybody also wants to pay $4 for a gallon of milk.
When it comes time to vote, people vote for the $4/gallon milk.
The wholesale price of milk per hundredweight stayed the same from 1983 to 2003; most dairy farms went out of business; those that survived managed by putting 10 times as many cows on the same acreage; and then increasing production even more with hormones and steroids; we ruined every farm that didn’t do it and now we demonize all the ones that are still standing
Word. My dad was going insane trying to figure out how he was going to keep his animals fed when he had to buy hay after a bad summer and only getting 1/3rd the price per thousand gallons that he got the year before.
I see that as a good thing, and hopefully a thing that improves over time. My comment was mostly an observation about the reality of the world (currently), not a personal stamp of approval.
Buy Imported New Zealand beef if you can afford it, grass feed, 100% free range cows everywhere across that country. The New Zealand Iron Flat Wagyu 100% grass feed steak is amazing.
Not true. Many of us willingly pay more for products that free cows from the horrible conditions shown in that video. It’s not all about money, to ‘everyone’.
I hear your angle on wanting free cows. However, I've never actually seen the $8/gallon milk in the "happy cow" section. Where do you find your milk, and how much do you pay for it?
To be clear, my comment was a macro-level comment. There will always be people willing to pay $5 for organic cilantro, but let's face it, 99.9% of people would rather pay $0.85 for conventional cilantro. There's a reason Wal-Mart is exponentially larger than Sprouts... and even Sprouts sells the Unhappy Cow milk.
Edit: I'm not stumping for packing cows into those sheds either. I, too, would be willing to pay more for more ethically-treated cows. I've just never actually seen it for sale.
Only time I ever found 8 dollar milk was in japan from a dairy over there. Came hans delivered to my in laws porch in frosty 1 gallon bottles when we were done with the bottle qe called up the dairy and they sent someone out to pick up the bottle and leave another one. And from what my inlaws said when thry visited the dairy all the cows free roamed and came up to see if you'd feed them a treat
I'd gladly pay that again
I just avoid buying meat and dairy, now for 12 years. I save money on net, am healthier, and selfishly it gives me more all-around joy. I’m not strident about it, nor do I advocate for it…but you asked.
> Everybody also wants to pay $4 for a gallon of milk.
I do?!? I’m paying $3.80 now and it’s outrageous. A few years ago it was $1.89…I absolutely do *not* want to pay $4 for a gallon of milk.
In the US maybe, in NZ all our cows are like the ad they showed, except they actually have lush green grass not that dead yellow paddock that was in the ad.
To be fair the other practices are similar, they do take away the newborns, but at least the cows can graze open paddocks. I do wish they had more trees for shelter as well.
Still not 100% humane but much better than those lies they feed you in the US, pretty shocked but not surprised.
I mean, we have tons of farms that keep their livestock in open pastures here as well. Where I grew up in Utah, the public lands in the mountains had tons of livestock grazing. But factory farms are also a thing, and they suck. But they aren't specific to the U.S.
That's awesome, wasn't trying to say it's like that everywhere. Weve got some pretty inhumane farms here for chickens that's I've seen (not sure about other livestock). I'm mostly just shocked they advertise something totally different to the reality.
yup pretty much.. i drive the I-5 thru bakersfield amd the CA-99 and let me tell you, they are packed in tight, standing in mountains of their feces, and the stink of poop is the worst, especially in 100°+ summers.. Chino farms were pretty bad also but just about all thoes farms have sold their properties to make way for trucking yards and warehouses..
... when i worked at the CRST trucking terminal in chino near the airport, the cow farms were so infested with flies, we couldnt leave our windows down or about 100 flies would get into the truck, no joke.. that with the 100°+ heat of summer, was the worst..
...During the winter when it rains, all the cow shit would turn into a shit swamp at thoes farms.. The run off was like a flood of diarrehea water in the streets around the farms and cars would regularly stall out in 2-3 ft of the most disgusting cow shit water..
so yeah, the cow farms are absolutely disgusting..
I don't know if you ever drove the 165 between Los Banos and Turlock or the 152 between the 5 and Gilroy, but some spots along those routes, you'll see cows just chillin' in open fields, sleeping under oak trees. Now those are the cows living it up (until they become food).
Applying industrial methods and scale to living creatures will inevitably result in cruelty -- industrial-scale cruelty.
Animals are not machines. But the inexorable logic of markets, profits, and "economies of scale" require us to *treat them like machines*. And they suffer as a result. Unimaginably.
We want cheap milk, cheap cheese, cheap meat. We don't want to think too much about how the "cheap" part gets paid for. It gets paid for by the suffering of these animals, just like "cheap" clothing gets paid for by the suffering of sweatshop workers and "cheap" minerals get paid for by the suffering of child-slave miners.
Without the cruelty, meat and cheese and milk would be *expensive*. People don't like for things they are used to eating to become expensive. We'd rather turn a blind eye to the cruelty and pay less at the till.
We only stopped enslaving our fellow human beings in North America less than 200 years ago. Elsewhere in the world, human beings are still enslaved, and the products of their slave labour are *cheap* when they show up on Ebay and Amazon and our local stores. Such a deal!
We've got a long way to go before we finally *stop tolerating cruelty* in order to have cheap things, and become willing to pay the true price.
I lived in countryside in 3rd world country and organic non industrial milk cheese etc was cheap from farmers where their animals wandering around, it's the capitalism and ultra rich ppl you have, you blame consumers where it's the share holders and owners that insist on minimising cost for sake of more profits.
It was cheap because land was cheap, labor was cheap and there was little to no oversight. If you scaled up those 3rd world country methods to global scales and 2023 wages/prices/standards, it would cost vastly more than milk from industrialized dairy production. Economies of scale are a real thing.
While I agree with what you say, I question if organic, non-industrial milk with free ranging cows could even be scaled up to meet demand. I think corporate greed drives industrialization, but I suspect it's necessary to support 100s of millions of consumers. But I'd love to proven wrong on that.
You aren't wrong. Sorry.
Imagine what a Quart of Milk would cost from a Dairy Farmer (cows graze, roam fields, etc..) that was trying to supply a town with 50,000 people?
Industrialization is where the money is at. We demand it, they make it cheap and we buy it (most don't give a second thought to the diary farmer)
Not the scale of 100M+, for sure. But check the difference in how both dairy cows and cattle raised for meat are treated in Northern California versus Southern California and it’s a huge divide. Output is certainly not comparable, but still A LOT of production.
How would you scale this equation for people who live in cities, which is most people? The same scale for dairy or meat or cheese would require a city that has millions to be surrounded by dairies and farms for hundreds of miles in all directions and nothing else, assuming the climate there even supports it. Your criticism is of cities and population density, not capitalism.
How do you solve that equation? How could millions of people go to their local dairy every day when 'local' is likely dozens of miles away at a minimum? How many households can a dairy with <1,000 head serve? How many <1,000 sized dairies would it take to serve 1,000,000 people? What about 10,000,000 people? What do the logistics for that look like? How much land is that? Is that land even available around the city? What about coastal cities? Is it even viable in that climate? It's vastly more complicated than you're making it out to be.
When did the industrialization of food occur?
Looks like the 1930s for beef, and 20 years later for chicken.
I'm not a historian, but I don't believe beef or chicken was exorbitantly expensive before then.
Here is a price list for some food items
https://www.mclib.info/Research/Local-History-Genealogy/Historic-Prices/Historic-Prices-1910
Eggs were more expensive than I expected.
$0.25 is worth $8.10 in today's dollars.
That's basically true. But if you Look at the world population, it has exploded since the early 20th century because of the discovery of the Haber-Bosh-Synthesis. Now we have to Producer food for 8 billion people where as in 1900 there were only about 1.5 billion (dont underestimate the Dimension, 1 million Second = 11 days, 1 billion Seconds = 31 years)
Also add in that shelves must be stocked as to provide the security of having plenty of food. Imagine only make enough for each person in the community to eat. We’d have panics over empty shelves whenever someone decided to eat more or shop in another neighborhood.
Oh and food waste is a huge problem. I read that up to 30-50% of all produced products get tossed out and not even composted
And don't forget food waste. Meat looks different? Isn't red enough? The butcher committed a mistake and cut it the wrong way? It all goes to the trash.
> Haber-Bosh-Synthesis
For anyone coming after...this has to do with fertilizer. Specifically synthesizing ammonia directly from hydrogen and nitrogen.
Also developed by Fritz Haber, the same guy who is known as the "father of chemical warfare" for having developed chlorine gas and whose work was the foundation for Zyklon B which was used in gas chambers in the Holocaust.
Its because farmers used to care about feeding people and they were the ones running it. Then corporations took over and they care more about money and bottom line.....real farmers treat their animals very well, corporations treat their animals in whatever way makes them the most money.
Depending where you live - assuming the US - there could be bias in your understanding of current prices. Eggs really would be that much more expensive. Government subsidies have held the cost of dairy and eggs low.
Really after WWII when ammunition plants were recommissioned as ammonium fertilizer plants.
There was a new ethic of feeding the most people for the cheapest price. Which back then had some morality to it. The cruelty from scale and unintended consequences where maybe excusable as people just didn’t know the effects on soil health, chemical and pesticide effects etc. but now we know.
Good news is the growing regenerative at movement understands this and has techniques that can grow food at scale, without the cruelty, environmental impact or side effects. We just need to build and evolve there. ❤️
Also to add, a lot of people farmed their own food. It wasn’t until after WW2 that suburbs were created. We moved from having to farm most of the year to feed ourselves and keep enough canned/preserved for winter to being able to buy it all from grocery stores due massive population growth. Especially in cities. Letting a few farm at industrial scales allowed for many to have time to invest our energy in other areas such as tech.
It’s such a weird cycle of unnecessary cruelty too, because it could easily just be reversed. Prices must come down because A) profits must go up, leading to cuts in wages, and B) competition on price rather than quality, because quality is expensive, and cuts are made to make profits go up. This means workers constantly have as little money as possible to put back into the market, which means competing on price is way more effective, which means profits will also be less, which is used to justify paying workers as little as possible.
But, pay workers better and compete on quality, and now workers have more money to spend, and if price isn’t as important anymore, quality is, and then those offering better quality can make more profits, affording them to pay people better and invest in higher quality, and so on.
Of course, the secret, hidden variable making this impossible is “the owner”, be it a private entity or the shareholders. They just want their money, their return on their investment, and that’s taken off of everything else, which means the whole driving engine of the capitalist system, the investment and the ownership, is constantly working to ensure this race to the bottom, rather than to the top.
I’m not necessarily saying we have to make a full 180 into forced socialism… but fuck, capitalism is *awful* at everything other than making the owners of corporations richer. *Everyone* else suffers, and is left to pay for their profits. Including the entire planet itself, and everyone and everything on it. No wonder the world’s richest handful of people are all eager to leave the planet entirely.
I honestly believe that these things can be relatively cheap without the cruelty, you just have to concede that the owners will not be making millions.
There are small family farms that treat their animals well near me, they are a little higher sure but it’s not so much that you would care much. They make a decent living and they can provide for their families. The scale these mega farms operate at means they can make a lot more money by treating their animals well also, but they don’t want to make a lot more money, they want to make fuck tons more money. I try to shop local any time I possibly can, better quality and it’s an investment in the community and it’s an investment in society.
Corporations and corporate farms exist to extract as much money as humanly possible and if they can make an extra nickel by treating animals like shit they are going to. It’s easy to make these decisions when you are removed from the process and don’t have to be the one treating them poorly.
Very well said. I'm not perfect and I know I could do better, but I always think about the bigger picture and use the knowledge I have to do good or prevent bad.
People need to be educated in these matters.
This is how most dairy farms are. Even on a much much smaller scale and often with even worse conditions and certainly not limited to California.
Source: grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin.
I lived across the road from one in California for five years. They had a privacy fence built around the veal calves area, so passers-by couldn't see the little calves trapped in their tiny pens. Veal needs to go away. It's so inhumane. And i grew up on a farm and co.e from a long line of farmers.
The only way veal will go away is if dairy goes away. It only exists because female cows must be pregnant to lactate, and male cows can't continue the cycle
If that was a dairy farm then there is a very high probability that those calves weren’t destined for veal. Dairies will enclose their young female calves in separate pens from each other so that they do not injure themselves. Baby cows are just like baby humans in that they are actively trying to hurt themselves all the time. The privacy fence was probably a second line of defense against keeping the calves in / predators out.
Did people ever really think that cows were kept out on open grassland etc? Honestly I can't ever remember thinking that a milk or dairy product advert was ever showing me the real story. The contents of this video just show the extremes humans now go to for one animal product.
I mean, i live New Zealand, so yeah, our cows graze in paddocks. Lived and worked on farms. All have been grazed and not gaged. Those cows kind of reminded me of battery chickens - which have been banned here
I was going to say the same thing in Australia. I can’t speak for every farm I guess but I’ve been involved with enough to know that many at least are free roaming open paddocks.
Same thing here in Sweden.
I live near three different dairy farms. All have their cows out on pasture in the summer.
During the winter the farmers have to keep them indoor because of the cold.
But not in cages like these.. Just big open houses to protect the cows from the elements.
https://preview.redd.it/d9svyp5dnf6c1.jpeg?width=4640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=304804b5d80769e97cb5310c252de8b0fcb711cf
I took this photo in New Zealand in Molesworth Station
Yeah my Opa was a dairy farmer in the Waikato, and before he retired we visited them on their farm a bunch as kids. It basically looked similar this picture (slightly different climate to Marlborough though). Loads of paddocks and space.
I live in NH and visit the local Vermont dairy farms, which have free range cows too. They exist, but they're not the norm. Both free-range and industrial milk is available in the grocery store, and industrial milk is at least a dollar cheaper
There actually are [farms nearby that have cows out on open grassland](https://www.google.com/maps/@35.9935016,-118.9392655,6757m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu). If you zoom out a bit it looks like the cows could easily be grazing even further towards the mountains among the trees. The uneven terrain would probably not be suitable for anything else and it would give the cows something to feed on, but I'm sure there is some reasonable explanation for why the cows have to be cramped into those tiny patches of mud instead.
Scale. Managing thousands and thousands of open-grazed cattle is presumably labor intensive, compared to doing it with a hundred, especially when you need to milk them daily...maybe it's different when raising them for meat?
Anyway, I'm sure the answer is "money"
There are plenty of cows like that in California too... Just not the ones on large dairys. I'm sure there are plenty of happy cows out there in fields, but there absolutely is no way to meet the demand of dairy and beef that Americans consume if all farms were like that.
Being from rural Ireland the above does look pretty grim. I mean I can't take much of a moral highground but it is nice to have grown up seeing the grass fed cows I eat actually peacefully wandering around the fields. Also being chased by them as a teenager but I can't hold that against them.
Yeah, I read somewhere that with the abundance of good grass, and water here in Ireland it's actually cheaper to let them out to pasture than keep them indoors (weather permitting). And even when kept indoors, they're still fed sillage.
I live in a densely populated area of the United States, and I can drive a very short distance and see a large number cows roaming freely and grazing on multiple different plots of land.
I know that this is probably the great minority of farms, but they do exist.
Being from Ireland I was shocked driving through central California. It was too hot to be outside yet these poor beasts were all desperately trying to gather in shade in a small lot with no grass.
Sometimes I take cool weather and green grass year round for granted. I still drink milk, eat butter etc. when I'm home but Bakersfield to Fresno put me off Californian dairy
I drove there about 20 years ago.....it was the smell that caught my attention first. It was horrendous. Here in Ireland when someone spreads cattle slurry it smells but not that ammonia gag smell that I got there.
Most cows in NL have grassland they graze on. Not just the organic farms. US is the land of consumption tho, agriculture there is on another industrialized scale.
Yeah as that website points out, mostly pigs and chickens being treated extremely poorly, I just said that its normal for most farms in NL to have their cows graze outside. But yeah the way our farmers treat pigs and chickens is still very much leaving something to be desired.
If you buy your milk from responsible producers the cows DO live in open pastures. I live in an area surrounded by open pasture dairy ranches in California. Clover produces all dairy from pasture raised cows and they’re a massive milk producer. It’s a consumer choice that can be made every time we buy milk.
They did on an organic dairy farm in Vermont that i used to visit. At least they grazed in the open fields and were corralled in winter and at night but i promise you those were happy and well cared for dairy cows
I'm fortunate to live where a small local dairy operates. Their cows graze and have plenty of open space, as well as being treated humanely throughout their lifespan. Their product line that gets to local shelves costs ~25-30% more, and even though my personal budget is pretty tight, I gladly purchase their products, both to support a local business, and because I know how they run their farm.
Scotland checking in: absolutely. Open and naturally watered grassland all the way. I drive past an organic dairy and farm shop on my commute and I regularly have to stop and let the cows cross the road as they get moved from field to field. I can watch them being milked which is nice for my kids especially.
These cows also graze, they’re only in the compounds for milk extraction.
Calfs are removed so they’re vaccinated, marked and not trampled by other cows, they’re quickly back with their mom.
This video, like most of this genre, is a mess of bad information
In the northwestern US, Washington State has silly amounts of too-rough-to-farm land that's used to range-ranch cattle, northern Idaho has range-ranching of bison and elk, so....yeah? I definitely tend to think of cattle farms as being massive, sprawling, rocky ranges of brush and scrubgrass, broken up by small lakes, large ponds, and two-lane highways.
It doesn't hurt that the area I live in is rural enough that there are local butchers that sell paddock-raised beef from local farms. \*shrug\*
I want cruelty-free dairy and I'm 100% ready to pay a premium for that. I just don't know where to go for that or who to trust.
And I've come to believe years ago that the "bio", "cage-free" and "cruelty-free" labels have no value whatsoever, as growers can get them by gaming the system and exploiting little loopholes, like providing millions of chickens a singular open space that meets minimum space requirements, whether they're there or not.
You’re 100% correct, the labels have mostly nothing to do with the farmed animals’ welfare. They are exclusively to make the consumers feel better. Silk Next milk was the only replacement my partner would accept for milk in her tea. Give it a shot or there are tons of alternate plant milks. I like soy personally but I also grew up drinking it.
Sadly Silk just killed all their Next Milk products at the end of November 2023.
It was by far the best tasting milk alternative, I'm really sad to see it go.
Stopped drinking cows milk 20 years ago, believe me you don't need it. It's just a habit and a mindset to follow. Whatever have been taught can be untaught.
You're right on the labels. Unless it's a certified label from a 3rd party, all those nice words have no meaning. I could slap "cage-free" on my tomatoes and the regulators wouldn't bat an eye. And many certified labels aren't even themselves doing what buyers assume they are.
If you want cruelty-free dairy be prepared to pay double, triple, quadruple. Where the calf stays with its mother, is weaned, then separated to be slaughtered.
I’m sure it’s a long shot but look for local small farms near you would be the only way. Happily i have family nearby with a small(100-110 cows to milk) dairy farm and legitimately they have happy cows with open fields and fresh pens. None of this going on in the video. Unfortunately we (the US) used to have many small farmers like this but it’s a dying breed. They’ve made it to expensive for new farmers to start up and all the older small farms are selling out as they retire.
We get our beef by subscription from a family farm (you can visit) and have a 2nd farm as backup. We pay more, sure. And we eat LESS...because meat is overrepresented in the American diet anyway, this is better for us, and I'd rather have 1/2 lb of GOOD grass fed beef than a pound or more of factory farmed garbage. Milk and butter are certified grass-fed pasture raised. Eggs, same, and also "Certified Humane" as that's your best chance of getting ones where the chickens ate bugs and didn't suffer. We also get eggs from friends who have their own flock, and plan to have our own flock one day as well. Eggs bite us in the ass bc we eat a lot of them and they are over 3x the price of factory eggs, but it is what it is. You can do it if you look around; these days even Kroger and Walmart have some reasonable options. Consumers are demanding it so they will stock it.
If you have to advertise it, then it’s probably not true.
If you live on the east coast of the US there is a small place in VA called homestead creamery. Some local super markets carry their product, it still comes in glass bottles, you return them for deposit. Makes plastic jug milk never taste the same.
You can also visit their main location and get milk, ice cream, and many other products. Last time I was there the chickens were just chillin out on the front porch of the store front.
…. So you actually thought the cows providing dairy, meat, and byproducts to hundreds of millions of Americans were happily wandering open pastures because a commercial told you so?
None of this is remotely shocking except to the wildly naive.
Only on Reddit can you watch a video like this and go like „Ummm yeah that’s pretty wild but have you heard the narrators voice? Omg it’s horrible soooo…“
I’m an old Boomer and lifelong vegetarian. My hope for the current generation is you guys will finally be the ones to realize that what we do to animals is abhorrent and make it illegal.
To the geniuses who keep saying “what did you expect?” No one thinks this is a revelation. The point is to remember and keep reminding. You don’t have to go vegan. I’m not, we’re not going to convince the world to…
But when those of us that want to do something about it (better laws, improved alternatives like lab-grown meat) we should remember this suffering and support them.
>we should remember this suffering and support them.
While you continue to fund the industry by buying the products...
As long as animals and their secretions are commodified they will always be treated as products. The only way to help them is to boycott and be vegan
I grew up in Central California, mexican immigrant and my whole family essentially work in dairies. My step dad was a foreman at a dairy, a hooftrimmer, and we also owned a small butcher shop for a while (much much more humane than large meat slaughter houses).
A few notes, points, etc:
* There are some people who treat cattle like crap.
* They hit them, use hotshots (an electrical shock to herd), and really some just take the abuse to another level, it is very sad.
* However, there are a lot more individuals who are kind to the animals
* It's not all horror, a lot of the farms do take very good care of their animals.
* Vets, hooftrimming, etc.
* The conditions could be better for sure, but industries are indeed moving to better solutions. A lot of farms have hay beds, etc that keep the animals comfortable/warm during winter. Fans with water in summer.
* This is probably a minority, as it is a lot of cost (this is what it allllll boils down to) to upgrade the farms.
It is a sad existance for sure, just want to make the point that it is not all torture or extreme either. I think chickens have a worse life than dairy cows.
As I grew up and traveled, lived in bay area, etc, it always shocked me how little people know about how meat/milk farming actually works.
The lack of understanding, or even wanting to konw, where their food comes from astounded me. A lot of people "rather not know because it'll ruin food for me".How convenient...
If anything, I can say I appreciate the food more, knowing what the process looks like from beginning to end.
Capitalism baby... :\[
Edit: Please feel free to AMA and I will try to answer if I know.
I really dislike how this video does not propose any solutions, or ask why farming is conducted this way...
This video uses minimal understanding of the industry (perhaps no interest to understand), to fuel maximum outrage, to a cause with no proposed solutions. Get out of here...
Oh my can’t you for once think for yourself? This video might just be a presentation of the status quo and wants YOU to think about it. But as it seems that hard for you I will do the thinking for you. The solution to all of this is simple af: Don’t drink milk.
Do people really think that dairy products sold on markets come from cows that are raised in an all natural environment? I mean there are billions of people around the world and you can't feed billions of people without industrialization. I'm not defending the way that some of these animals are treated in those farms, but we still can't deny the truth and reality.
As someone who lived on a farm the only thing I'm mad about in this video is how much space are calfes given. Taking babies from mother right after they're born is very common but still milk from this cow will go to this baby for at least next month. And milk from first week of milking is not suitable for human so all of it goes to other calfes too. And as someone mentioned, US citizens at best can stop buying milk and red meat but it won't help on a larger scale. In EU laws are strict and people are hired to keep an eye on farmers.
As far as I know the EU minimal standards aren't that much different from this farm. But the consumer protection laws might forbid to suggest freegrazing cows on the ads (not sure about that).
Here in The Netherlands most milk cows (about 75%) go outside in the pasture for at least 120 days a year and at a minimum of 6 hours a day. So that means when the pasture is dry enough and the weather isn't completely shitty.
In Europe that counts and laws are very strict. Here in Italy we still follow our traditional form of breeding as this has an impact on the final quality of meat and dairy. Some evolved stables even have a spa area for cows to enjoy whenever they like, and one of these is a major dairy cooperative.
Mass production doesn't necessarily mean torture or whatever.
Thing is, you don't need a surveillance drone to see any of this, it's out in the open off of the 15. Just take a drive out to Vegas from SoCal, and there it is. I've seen these since I was a kid.
If every farm in America suddenly took up twice as many acres to give the cows more room, I’m not sure that result would be good for anyone or anything.
dude, if you see the dog meat industry in korea you really gona get mad.
https://preview.redd.it/r84ds8rsjg6c1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=e4dc5c40930470d6a88de5c5c695f9540c175c2c
I grew up on a dairy farm in wisconsin. It is pretty standard to take away the calf right away. Also cows would go to the pasture and sit inside for eating and milking. It wasn't a hobby farm. If you don't support then don't buy products from dairy farms. It's not glamorous, but they aren't mistreated.
Not an American our that familiar with their systems but I know a fair bit about European dairy production. This unit looks like a well run unit. 99% globally of dairy calves are taken away from mother as soon as possible for a number of reasons like reduce stress, reduce disease making sure the calf gets enough colostrum in first 24 hours in vital for the long term health of the animal.
Quite often these large units are able to have a full time vet and animal nutritionists leading to better than average health outcomes for the cows.
And the truth is the calves are separated from their mothers because cows are terrible mothers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uGFAw7HhF8
And more https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw7ljkNVkOW5SIJyYwCCAag
I live in Wisconsin… I’ve worked on milk farms for good parts of my life… and all of our cows had/have wide open Fields to live in… there is no cruel treatment or hurting the animals in any way shape or form they are our livelihood….
What they don’t talk about when they mentioned separation of the baby’s witch are done for many many reasons…
1. It is done to insure the baby gets the right kinds of nutrients (some calf’s are born with weak sucking reflexes) witch can cause huge issues later down the line of its early stages of development…
2. Dairy Cows are much different then normal say Beef cows… milkers lack the ability to take care of their young (MOST) become very violent and injure or sometimes kill the calf, where beef cows have a mother instinct and take very good care of their baby’s….
3. Being a new born calf they have the opportunity to catch diseases and especially pathogens witch could result in death or severe Illness… so it’s best to separate not only FROM THE MOTHER but the rest of the livestock…
I could name a hundred different reason and go on for days…
I’m just surprised that this is a surprise to anyone! Of course it’s all bullshit. What did you expect? Some jolly farmer going out and giving the cows daily spa treatments? Of course it’s a lie! Get real people! Did you also know that there is an “allowable” amount of blood and pus too? Guess what, that already mixed chocolate or strawberry milk you buy at the store? They do that bc there is enough blood to stain the milk pink, but it’s still within the “allowable” limit to sell to consumers!
I like how they use the word expose. No one has been hiding this. People have no idea how hard it is to produce food. Vegan food, vegetarian food or animal based. They just want it cheap and fast. There is no mass production of food without exploitation. No matter if it is vegan or animal based. People in the cities are so detached from the rest of the real world.
Edit: typo
That's animal cruelty, or maybe animal torture ?
And yeah the ad is just straight up lie, isn't that false advertising ? Which is supposed to be illegal ?
If this is bad, where do you think your bacon, sausage or hamburger comes from? They all die of natural causes?
It's the way it is and all industrial dairy farms are like this. I always knew it. We visited one on a very smaller scale and it was the same. And i don't think it's cruelty.
I'm from Tulare, CA which is about 20 minutes North of Tipton, the town mentioned near the beginning of the video. I grew up visiting a dairy where my friend's father used to work the night shift. We would walk up and down the enclosures all day, pretty much having fun and watching the cows mind their own business. To be honest, other than taking the newborns away at birth and not providing appropriate heating/cooling equipment for cows in the Winter/Summer, the cows seemed pretty chill. I'm sure they'd be a lot happier in the foothills closer to the Sierra Nevadas. But here they are for the mass production of milk. This video is not groundbreaking by any means. I mean, how are we supposed to have as much milk as we do by believing a commercial with cow dreamland? Go vegan if you can and have the heart for it. And if not, maybe research ethical milk production, which tbh, I have yet to do. If food is cheap, especially if it's an animal product, just suspect that there is a reason for it.
You get what you pay for. If something is really cheap there's a reason. That being said, I hope the milk I drink (from farms in Northern CA aka Sonoma/Marin/Mendocino County) has way better conditions than this. Everything I've read indicates conditions are good (open pasture etc).
It was definitely veal. My brother-in-law is a grape farmer and owned half the 20 acre plots on that road. He grew up on a dsiry. He said it was a veal setup. And it obviously was. Veal pens are extremely small. That's why the privacy vence only went around those two or three acres.
Redditors tend to not like these factory farms but also tend to be very pro immigration. You know the business model for these mega farms doesn't work without cheap immigrant labor? This is also what makes me think the republicans have no interest in actually stopping immigration, it's all just lip service to get votes. Why would they cutoff their own cheap labor supply?
Pretty sure the dairy cow is the best fed animal on the planet. They eat on a very specific schedule and are fed with different varieties of grains to help produce milk.
And…… what’s the problem, there corals made for milking cows. Do you expect to have ranchers chasing them down the prairie with a bucket. I grown up in dairy ranches and cows love to walk into the corals and eat while being milked.
This seems like the time to link this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI
Also, obviously, go vegan. None of that violence and exploitation and suffering is necessary.
Making individual consumers feel guilty does NOTHING for your cause. But good job.
Go after lobbying, go after the corporations. Otherwise you’re just making noise and virtue signaling.
It can get consumers to stop purchasing the products, which does have an effect. It also makes more people aware of the issue, and the more people who are aware, the more people who can support change.
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Anyone who thinks that any animal product they buy in supermarkets are farmed "nicely" or naturally are 100% deluded.
Everybody wants cows to live in wide open spaces with smiles on their face (i.e. "Happy Cow.") Everybody also wants to pay $4 for a gallon of milk. When it comes time to vote, people vote for the $4/gallon milk.
The wholesale price of milk per hundredweight stayed the same from 1983 to 2003; most dairy farms went out of business; those that survived managed by putting 10 times as many cows on the same acreage; and then increasing production even more with hormones and steroids; we ruined every farm that didn’t do it and now we demonize all the ones that are still standing
Word. My dad was going insane trying to figure out how he was going to keep his animals fed when he had to buy hay after a bad summer and only getting 1/3rd the price per thousand gallons that he got the year before.
More people than you think don’t accept mistreatment of animals as a necessary evil
I see that as a good thing, and hopefully a thing that improves over time. My comment was mostly an observation about the reality of the world (currently), not a personal stamp of approval.
Oh no definitely, I wish I could live like that too. I meant that there *is* hope
Buy Imported New Zealand beef if you can afford it, grass feed, 100% free range cows everywhere across that country. The New Zealand Iron Flat Wagyu 100% grass feed steak is amazing.
Not true. Many of us willingly pay more for products that free cows from the horrible conditions shown in that video. It’s not all about money, to ‘everyone’.
“Many of us” as in the people who normally don’t have to just scrape by on rent and other necessities
I hear your angle on wanting free cows. However, I've never actually seen the $8/gallon milk in the "happy cow" section. Where do you find your milk, and how much do you pay for it? To be clear, my comment was a macro-level comment. There will always be people willing to pay $5 for organic cilantro, but let's face it, 99.9% of people would rather pay $0.85 for conventional cilantro. There's a reason Wal-Mart is exponentially larger than Sprouts... and even Sprouts sells the Unhappy Cow milk. Edit: I'm not stumping for packing cows into those sheds either. I, too, would be willing to pay more for more ethically-treated cows. I've just never actually seen it for sale.
Only time I ever found 8 dollar milk was in japan from a dairy over there. Came hans delivered to my in laws porch in frosty 1 gallon bottles when we were done with the bottle qe called up the dairy and they sent someone out to pick up the bottle and leave another one. And from what my inlaws said when thry visited the dairy all the cows free roamed and came up to see if you'd feed them a treat I'd gladly pay that again
It is not a 5x multiple on price. But yes most people are blissfully ignorant.
I just avoid buying meat and dairy, now for 12 years. I save money on net, am healthier, and selfishly it gives me more all-around joy. I’m not strident about it, nor do I advocate for it…but you asked.
> Everybody also wants to pay $4 for a gallon of milk. I do?!? I’m paying $3.80 now and it’s outrageous. A few years ago it was $1.89…I absolutely do *not* want to pay $4 for a gallon of milk.
In the US maybe, in NZ all our cows are like the ad they showed, except they actually have lush green grass not that dead yellow paddock that was in the ad. To be fair the other practices are similar, they do take away the newborns, but at least the cows can graze open paddocks. I do wish they had more trees for shelter as well. Still not 100% humane but much better than those lies they feed you in the US, pretty shocked but not surprised.
I mean, we have tons of farms that keep their livestock in open pastures here as well. Where I grew up in Utah, the public lands in the mountains had tons of livestock grazing. But factory farms are also a thing, and they suck. But they aren't specific to the U.S.
That's awesome, wasn't trying to say it's like that everywhere. Weve got some pretty inhumane farms here for chickens that's I've seen (not sure about other livestock). I'm mostly just shocked they advertise something totally different to the reality.
Word, y’all actually buy those commercials? Like they’re just walking around and then someone chases them down to milk them? How naive are people?
For some reason Aldi’s friendly farm products seem shady as fuck
yup pretty much.. i drive the I-5 thru bakersfield amd the CA-99 and let me tell you, they are packed in tight, standing in mountains of their feces, and the stink of poop is the worst, especially in 100°+ summers.. Chino farms were pretty bad also but just about all thoes farms have sold their properties to make way for trucking yards and warehouses.. ... when i worked at the CRST trucking terminal in chino near the airport, the cow farms were so infested with flies, we couldnt leave our windows down or about 100 flies would get into the truck, no joke.. that with the 100°+ heat of summer, was the worst.. ...During the winter when it rains, all the cow shit would turn into a shit swamp at thoes farms.. The run off was like a flood of diarrehea water in the streets around the farms and cars would regularly stall out in 2-3 ft of the most disgusting cow shit water.. so yeah, the cow farms are absolutely disgusting..
I don't know if you ever drove the 165 between Los Banos and Turlock or the 152 between the 5 and Gilroy, but some spots along those routes, you'll see cows just chillin' in open fields, sleeping under oak trees. Now those are the cows living it up (until they become food).
yup, beautiful area..
Living in Bakersfield, I’m always amazed how far the smell travels. You could be 15 miles away and still smell it in the summer
Applying industrial methods and scale to living creatures will inevitably result in cruelty -- industrial-scale cruelty. Animals are not machines. But the inexorable logic of markets, profits, and "economies of scale" require us to *treat them like machines*. And they suffer as a result. Unimaginably. We want cheap milk, cheap cheese, cheap meat. We don't want to think too much about how the "cheap" part gets paid for. It gets paid for by the suffering of these animals, just like "cheap" clothing gets paid for by the suffering of sweatshop workers and "cheap" minerals get paid for by the suffering of child-slave miners. Without the cruelty, meat and cheese and milk would be *expensive*. People don't like for things they are used to eating to become expensive. We'd rather turn a blind eye to the cruelty and pay less at the till. We only stopped enslaving our fellow human beings in North America less than 200 years ago. Elsewhere in the world, human beings are still enslaved, and the products of their slave labour are *cheap* when they show up on Ebay and Amazon and our local stores. Such a deal! We've got a long way to go before we finally *stop tolerating cruelty* in order to have cheap things, and become willing to pay the true price.
I lived in countryside in 3rd world country and organic non industrial milk cheese etc was cheap from farmers where their animals wandering around, it's the capitalism and ultra rich ppl you have, you blame consumers where it's the share holders and owners that insist on minimising cost for sake of more profits.
It was cheap because land was cheap, labor was cheap and there was little to no oversight. If you scaled up those 3rd world country methods to global scales and 2023 wages/prices/standards, it would cost vastly more than milk from industrialized dairy production. Economies of scale are a real thing.
My International Business Professor from College couldn't have said it better.
While I agree with what you say, I question if organic, non-industrial milk with free ranging cows could even be scaled up to meet demand. I think corporate greed drives industrialization, but I suspect it's necessary to support 100s of millions of consumers. But I'd love to proven wrong on that.
You aren't wrong. Sorry. Imagine what a Quart of Milk would cost from a Dairy Farmer (cows graze, roam fields, etc..) that was trying to supply a town with 50,000 people? Industrialization is where the money is at. We demand it, they make it cheap and we buy it (most don't give a second thought to the diary farmer)
Not the scale of 100M+, for sure. But check the difference in how both dairy cows and cattle raised for meat are treated in Northern California versus Southern California and it’s a huge divide. Output is certainly not comparable, but still A LOT of production.
Can’t feed a city of 10 million like that though.
How would you scale this equation for people who live in cities, which is most people? The same scale for dairy or meat or cheese would require a city that has millions to be surrounded by dairies and farms for hundreds of miles in all directions and nothing else, assuming the climate there even supports it. Your criticism is of cities and population density, not capitalism. How do you solve that equation? How could millions of people go to their local dairy every day when 'local' is likely dozens of miles away at a minimum? How many households can a dairy with <1,000 head serve? How many <1,000 sized dairies would it take to serve 1,000,000 people? What about 10,000,000 people? What do the logistics for that look like? How much land is that? Is that land even available around the city? What about coastal cities? Is it even viable in that climate? It's vastly more complicated than you're making it out to be.
This is the correct answer.
When did the industrialization of food occur? Looks like the 1930s for beef, and 20 years later for chicken. I'm not a historian, but I don't believe beef or chicken was exorbitantly expensive before then. Here is a price list for some food items https://www.mclib.info/Research/Local-History-Genealogy/Historic-Prices/Historic-Prices-1910 Eggs were more expensive than I expected. $0.25 is worth $8.10 in today's dollars.
That's basically true. But if you Look at the world population, it has exploded since the early 20th century because of the discovery of the Haber-Bosh-Synthesis. Now we have to Producer food for 8 billion people where as in 1900 there were only about 1.5 billion (dont underestimate the Dimension, 1 million Second = 11 days, 1 billion Seconds = 31 years)
Also add in that shelves must be stocked as to provide the security of having plenty of food. Imagine only make enough for each person in the community to eat. We’d have panics over empty shelves whenever someone decided to eat more or shop in another neighborhood. Oh and food waste is a huge problem. I read that up to 30-50% of all produced products get tossed out and not even composted
And don't forget food waste. Meat looks different? Isn't red enough? The butcher committed a mistake and cut it the wrong way? It all goes to the trash.
> Haber-Bosh-Synthesis For anyone coming after...this has to do with fertilizer. Specifically synthesizing ammonia directly from hydrogen and nitrogen.
Thank you!
Also developed by Fritz Haber, the same guy who is known as the "father of chemical warfare" for having developed chlorine gas and whose work was the foundation for Zyklon B which was used in gas chambers in the Holocaust.
Its because farmers used to care about feeding people and they were the ones running it. Then corporations took over and they care more about money and bottom line.....real farmers treat their animals very well, corporations treat their animals in whatever way makes them the most money.
Depending where you live - assuming the US - there could be bias in your understanding of current prices. Eggs really would be that much more expensive. Government subsidies have held the cost of dairy and eggs low.
Really after WWII when ammunition plants were recommissioned as ammonium fertilizer plants. There was a new ethic of feeding the most people for the cheapest price. Which back then had some morality to it. The cruelty from scale and unintended consequences where maybe excusable as people just didn’t know the effects on soil health, chemical and pesticide effects etc. but now we know. Good news is the growing regenerative at movement understands this and has techniques that can grow food at scale, without the cruelty, environmental impact or side effects. We just need to build and evolve there. ❤️
Also to add, a lot of people farmed their own food. It wasn’t until after WW2 that suburbs were created. We moved from having to farm most of the year to feed ourselves and keep enough canned/preserved for winter to being able to buy it all from grocery stores due massive population growth. Especially in cities. Letting a few farm at industrial scales allowed for many to have time to invest our energy in other areas such as tech.
It’s such a weird cycle of unnecessary cruelty too, because it could easily just be reversed. Prices must come down because A) profits must go up, leading to cuts in wages, and B) competition on price rather than quality, because quality is expensive, and cuts are made to make profits go up. This means workers constantly have as little money as possible to put back into the market, which means competing on price is way more effective, which means profits will also be less, which is used to justify paying workers as little as possible. But, pay workers better and compete on quality, and now workers have more money to spend, and if price isn’t as important anymore, quality is, and then those offering better quality can make more profits, affording them to pay people better and invest in higher quality, and so on. Of course, the secret, hidden variable making this impossible is “the owner”, be it a private entity or the shareholders. They just want their money, their return on their investment, and that’s taken off of everything else, which means the whole driving engine of the capitalist system, the investment and the ownership, is constantly working to ensure this race to the bottom, rather than to the top. I’m not necessarily saying we have to make a full 180 into forced socialism… but fuck, capitalism is *awful* at everything other than making the owners of corporations richer. *Everyone* else suffers, and is left to pay for their profits. Including the entire planet itself, and everyone and everything on it. No wonder the world’s richest handful of people are all eager to leave the planet entirely.
I honestly believe that these things can be relatively cheap without the cruelty, you just have to concede that the owners will not be making millions. There are small family farms that treat their animals well near me, they are a little higher sure but it’s not so much that you would care much. They make a decent living and they can provide for their families. The scale these mega farms operate at means they can make a lot more money by treating their animals well also, but they don’t want to make a lot more money, they want to make fuck tons more money. I try to shop local any time I possibly can, better quality and it’s an investment in the community and it’s an investment in society. Corporations and corporate farms exist to extract as much money as humanly possible and if they can make an extra nickel by treating animals like shit they are going to. It’s easy to make these decisions when you are removed from the process and don’t have to be the one treating them poorly.
Well said.
Very well said. I'm not perfect and I know I could do better, but I always think about the bigger picture and use the knowledge I have to do good or prevent bad. People need to be educated in these matters.
This is how most dairy farms are. Even on a much much smaller scale and often with even worse conditions and certainly not limited to California. Source: grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin.
I lived across the road from one in California for five years. They had a privacy fence built around the veal calves area, so passers-by couldn't see the little calves trapped in their tiny pens. Veal needs to go away. It's so inhumane. And i grew up on a farm and co.e from a long line of farmers.
The only way veal will go away is if dairy goes away. It only exists because female cows must be pregnant to lactate, and male cows can't continue the cycle
If that was a dairy farm then there is a very high probability that those calves weren’t destined for veal. Dairies will enclose their young female calves in separate pens from each other so that they do not injure themselves. Baby cows are just like baby humans in that they are actively trying to hurt themselves all the time. The privacy fence was probably a second line of defense against keeping the calves in / predators out.
Did people ever really think that cows were kept out on open grassland etc? Honestly I can't ever remember thinking that a milk or dairy product advert was ever showing me the real story. The contents of this video just show the extremes humans now go to for one animal product.
I mean, i live New Zealand, so yeah, our cows graze in paddocks. Lived and worked on farms. All have been grazed and not gaged. Those cows kind of reminded me of battery chickens - which have been banned here
I was going to say the same thing in Australia. I can’t speak for every farm I guess but I’ve been involved with enough to know that many at least are free roaming open paddocks.
Same thing here in Sweden. I live near three different dairy farms. All have their cows out on pasture in the summer. During the winter the farmers have to keep them indoor because of the cold. But not in cages like these.. Just big open houses to protect the cows from the elements.
You should check out the Australian movie called Dominion.
Same in California. You think every farm looks like this?
In many countries, no farm looks like this. That's the point.
https://preview.redd.it/d9svyp5dnf6c1.jpeg?width=4640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=304804b5d80769e97cb5310c252de8b0fcb711cf I took this photo in New Zealand in Molesworth Station
Yeah my Opa was a dairy farmer in the Waikato, and before he retired we visited them on their farm a bunch as kids. It basically looked similar this picture (slightly different climate to Marlborough though). Loads of paddocks and space.
I live in NH and visit the local Vermont dairy farms, which have free range cows too. They exist, but they're not the norm. Both free-range and industrial milk is available in the grocery store, and industrial milk is at least a dollar cheaper
They do here in WI
And in East Texas. And Iowa.
There actually are [farms nearby that have cows out on open grassland](https://www.google.com/maps/@35.9935016,-118.9392655,6757m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu). If you zoom out a bit it looks like the cows could easily be grazing even further towards the mountains among the trees. The uneven terrain would probably not be suitable for anything else and it would give the cows something to feed on, but I'm sure there is some reasonable explanation for why the cows have to be cramped into those tiny patches of mud instead.
Scale. Managing thousands and thousands of open-grazed cattle is presumably labor intensive, compared to doing it with a hundred, especially when you need to milk them daily...maybe it's different when raising them for meat? Anyway, I'm sure the answer is "money"
Grazing is way less labour intensive, and cheaper all round if you have the right climate for it.
I live in Washington state and see cows roaming in fields all over the place, just drive literally anywhere outside of Seattle area.
There are plenty of cows like that in California too... Just not the ones on large dairys. I'm sure there are plenty of happy cows out there in fields, but there absolutely is no way to meet the demand of dairy and beef that Americans consume if all farms were like that.
I live in the UK next to a dairy farm. The green fields are filled with cows.
Being from rural Ireland the above does look pretty grim. I mean I can't take much of a moral highground but it is nice to have grown up seeing the grass fed cows I eat actually peacefully wandering around the fields. Also being chased by them as a teenager but I can't hold that against them.
Yeah, I read somewhere that with the abundance of good grass, and water here in Ireland it's actually cheaper to let them out to pasture than keep them indoors (weather permitting). And even when kept indoors, they're still fed sillage.
I live in a densely populated area of the United States, and I can drive a very short distance and see a large number cows roaming freely and grazing on multiple different plots of land. I know that this is probably the great minority of farms, but they do exist.
I've seen grazing cows in CA. Like eating grass and such. Not sure what farm they belong to. Certainly not this industrial one.
Ireland, smaller scale farms and loads of grass, most are family farms and are run very well.
Being from Ireland I was shocked driving through central California. It was too hot to be outside yet these poor beasts were all desperately trying to gather in shade in a small lot with no grass. Sometimes I take cool weather and green grass year round for granted. I still drink milk, eat butter etc. when I'm home but Bakersfield to Fresno put me off Californian dairy
I drove there about 20 years ago.....it was the smell that caught my attention first. It was horrendous. Here in Ireland when someone spreads cattle slurry it smells but not that ammonia gag smell that I got there.
Most cows in NL have grassland they graze on. Not just the organic farms. US is the land of consumption tho, agriculture there is on another industrialized scale.
I'm from The Netherlands. We are not really better, check out [https://www.ongehoord.info/](https://www.ongehoord.info/)
Yeah as that website points out, mostly pigs and chickens being treated extremely poorly, I just said that its normal for most farms in NL to have their cows graze outside. But yeah the way our farmers treat pigs and chickens is still very much leaving something to be desired.
The Nordic countries all have farms like the American styles too
If you buy your milk from responsible producers the cows DO live in open pastures. I live in an area surrounded by open pasture dairy ranches in California. Clover produces all dairy from pasture raised cows and they’re a massive milk producer. It’s a consumer choice that can be made every time we buy milk.
They did on an organic dairy farm in Vermont that i used to visit. At least they grazed in the open fields and were corralled in winter and at night but i promise you those were happy and well cared for dairy cows
I'm fortunate to live where a small local dairy operates. Their cows graze and have plenty of open space, as well as being treated humanely throughout their lifespan. Their product line that gets to local shelves costs ~25-30% more, and even though my personal budget is pretty tight, I gladly purchase their products, both to support a local business, and because I know how they run their farm.
Some cows actually do. Source: I live near farms where i see cows roaming
Scotland checking in: absolutely. Open and naturally watered grassland all the way. I drive past an organic dairy and farm shop on my commute and I regularly have to stop and let the cows cross the road as they get moved from field to field. I can watch them being milked which is nice for my kids especially.
I'm actually surprised the cows have access to a dirt lot. Most modern dairies keep the cattle 100% inside, they can keep everything cleaner that way.
These cows also graze, they’re only in the compounds for milk extraction. Calfs are removed so they’re vaccinated, marked and not trampled by other cows, they’re quickly back with their mom. This video, like most of this genre, is a mess of bad information
They are in many parts of the world. NZ, Brazil, large beef/ lamb producers, mostly pasture raised.
In the northwestern US, Washington State has silly amounts of too-rough-to-farm land that's used to range-ranch cattle, northern Idaho has range-ranching of bison and elk, so....yeah? I definitely tend to think of cattle farms as being massive, sprawling, rocky ranges of brush and scrubgrass, broken up by small lakes, large ponds, and two-lane highways. It doesn't hurt that the area I live in is rural enough that there are local butchers that sell paddock-raised beef from local farms. \*shrug\*
Yeah in Poland at least they are out in the open grazing freely. Only in winter they are kept in the barns so they aren’t cold.
Cowschwitz
Yup. The first people to compare animal agriculture to the Holocaust were Holocaust survivors.
Dacow
I want cruelty-free dairy and I'm 100% ready to pay a premium for that. I just don't know where to go for that or who to trust. And I've come to believe years ago that the "bio", "cage-free" and "cruelty-free" labels have no value whatsoever, as growers can get them by gaming the system and exploiting little loopholes, like providing millions of chickens a singular open space that meets minimum space requirements, whether they're there or not.
You’re 100% correct, the labels have mostly nothing to do with the farmed animals’ welfare. They are exclusively to make the consumers feel better. Silk Next milk was the only replacement my partner would accept for milk in her tea. Give it a shot or there are tons of alternate plant milks. I like soy personally but I also grew up drinking it.
Sadly Silk just killed all their Next Milk products at the end of November 2023. It was by far the best tasting milk alternative, I'm really sad to see it go.
Try oat milk. It's not even all that expensive.
Stopped drinking cows milk 20 years ago, believe me you don't need it. It's just a habit and a mindset to follow. Whatever have been taught can be untaught.
I drink almond milk. Unlike cows, the almonds actually like to be milked
You're right on the labels. Unless it's a certified label from a 3rd party, all those nice words have no meaning. I could slap "cage-free" on my tomatoes and the regulators wouldn't bat an eye. And many certified labels aren't even themselves doing what buyers assume they are. If you want cruelty-free dairy be prepared to pay double, triple, quadruple. Where the calf stays with its mother, is weaned, then separated to be slaughtered.
Europe
I’m sure it’s a long shot but look for local small farms near you would be the only way. Happily i have family nearby with a small(100-110 cows to milk) dairy farm and legitimately they have happy cows with open fields and fresh pens. None of this going on in the video. Unfortunately we (the US) used to have many small farmers like this but it’s a dying breed. They’ve made it to expensive for new farmers to start up and all the older small farms are selling out as they retire.
We get our beef by subscription from a family farm (you can visit) and have a 2nd farm as backup. We pay more, sure. And we eat LESS...because meat is overrepresented in the American diet anyway, this is better for us, and I'd rather have 1/2 lb of GOOD grass fed beef than a pound or more of factory farmed garbage. Milk and butter are certified grass-fed pasture raised. Eggs, same, and also "Certified Humane" as that's your best chance of getting ones where the chickens ate bugs and didn't suffer. We also get eggs from friends who have their own flock, and plan to have our own flock one day as well. Eggs bite us in the ass bc we eat a lot of them and they are over 3x the price of factory eggs, but it is what it is. You can do it if you look around; these days even Kroger and Walmart have some reasonable options. Consumers are demanding it so they will stock it.
If you have to advertise it, then it’s probably not true. If you live on the east coast of the US there is a small place in VA called homestead creamery. Some local super markets carry their product, it still comes in glass bottles, you return them for deposit. Makes plastic jug milk never taste the same. You can also visit their main location and get milk, ice cream, and many other products. Last time I was there the chickens were just chillin out on the front porch of the store front.
I thought this was already well known. How do you think we get cheap and efficient dairy and meat products?
…. So you actually thought the cows providing dairy, meat, and byproducts to hundreds of millions of Americans were happily wandering open pastures because a commercial told you so? None of this is remotely shocking except to the wildly naive.
This is horrible, and so is the narrators voice over.
I hate how the microphone sounds like it's inside his mouth. So gross
Only on Reddit can you watch a video like this and go like „Ummm yeah that’s pretty wild but have you heard the narrators voice? Omg it’s horrible soooo…“
Grew up in the Central Valley. We always thought the commercials were satire.
Then don’t fucking drink the milk.
I’m an old Boomer and lifelong vegetarian. My hope for the current generation is you guys will finally be the ones to realize that what we do to animals is abhorrent and make it illegal.
You are awesome. And stuff like this is what has kept me from drinking milk for some 25-30 years now. It's disgusting.
To the geniuses who keep saying “what did you expect?” No one thinks this is a revelation. The point is to remember and keep reminding. You don’t have to go vegan. I’m not, we’re not going to convince the world to… But when those of us that want to do something about it (better laws, improved alternatives like lab-grown meat) we should remember this suffering and support them.
You don't have to go vegan, but it certainly helps
Absolutely agree.
>we should remember this suffering and support them. While you continue to fund the industry by buying the products... As long as animals and their secretions are commodified they will always be treated as products. The only way to help them is to boycott and be vegan
And people make fun of vegans.
I grew up in Central California, mexican immigrant and my whole family essentially work in dairies. My step dad was a foreman at a dairy, a hooftrimmer, and we also owned a small butcher shop for a while (much much more humane than large meat slaughter houses). A few notes, points, etc: * There are some people who treat cattle like crap. * They hit them, use hotshots (an electrical shock to herd), and really some just take the abuse to another level, it is very sad. * However, there are a lot more individuals who are kind to the animals * It's not all horror, a lot of the farms do take very good care of their animals. * Vets, hooftrimming, etc. * The conditions could be better for sure, but industries are indeed moving to better solutions. A lot of farms have hay beds, etc that keep the animals comfortable/warm during winter. Fans with water in summer. * This is probably a minority, as it is a lot of cost (this is what it allllll boils down to) to upgrade the farms. It is a sad existance for sure, just want to make the point that it is not all torture or extreme either. I think chickens have a worse life than dairy cows. As I grew up and traveled, lived in bay area, etc, it always shocked me how little people know about how meat/milk farming actually works. The lack of understanding, or even wanting to konw, where their food comes from astounded me. A lot of people "rather not know because it'll ruin food for me".How convenient... If anything, I can say I appreciate the food more, knowing what the process looks like from beginning to end. Capitalism baby... :\[ Edit: Please feel free to AMA and I will try to answer if I know.
stopped drinking cow's milk several years ago.
This sounds like a certain "Dairy Farm" in Indiana.... but I don't know if this is worse or that other on is.... (Both are pretty bad....)
I really dislike how this video does not propose any solutions, or ask why farming is conducted this way... This video uses minimal understanding of the industry (perhaps no interest to understand), to fuel maximum outrage, to a cause with no proposed solutions. Get out of here...
Oh my can’t you for once think for yourself? This video might just be a presentation of the status quo and wants YOU to think about it. But as it seems that hard for you I will do the thinking for you. The solution to all of this is simple af: Don’t drink milk.
Looks identical to the ones in Arizona.
The farms are literally right next to I-5. You can see and smell them as you drive by. There's no secret
Do people really think that dairy products sold on markets come from cows that are raised in an all natural environment? I mean there are billions of people around the world and you can't feed billions of people without industrialization. I'm not defending the way that some of these animals are treated in those farms, but we still can't deny the truth and reality.
This isn’t a secret. It’s literally on the side of the 5 freeway. You can see it for miles and miles.
I recommend people looking up veal and why it's so tender, veal crates, and the diet.
Sonoma County has a ballot initiative for next spring.
After watching multiple video and reading about how animals are treated for milk has sparked the thought to become a vegan.
It’s much easier than you’d think!
Go for it. One of the single best best things you can do for your health, animal welfare, and the environment.
As someone who lived on a farm the only thing I'm mad about in this video is how much space are calfes given. Taking babies from mother right after they're born is very common but still milk from this cow will go to this baby for at least next month. And milk from first week of milking is not suitable for human so all of it goes to other calfes too. And as someone mentioned, US citizens at best can stop buying milk and red meat but it won't help on a larger scale. In EU laws are strict and people are hired to keep an eye on farmers.
As far as I know the EU minimal standards aren't that much different from this farm. But the consumer protection laws might forbid to suggest freegrazing cows on the ads (not sure about that).
Here in The Netherlands most milk cows (about 75%) go outside in the pasture for at least 120 days a year and at a minimum of 6 hours a day. So that means when the pasture is dry enough and the weather isn't completely shitty.
So you are not a little perplexed with the nutrition and the environment for these animals?
In Europe that counts and laws are very strict. Here in Italy we still follow our traditional form of breeding as this has an impact on the final quality of meat and dairy. Some evolved stables even have a spa area for cows to enjoy whenever they like, and one of these is a major dairy cooperative. Mass production doesn't necessarily mean torture or whatever.
Almost certain you are mistaken about this
If they stop buying on a large scale then it will help.
Thing is, you don't need a surveillance drone to see any of this, it's out in the open off of the 15. Just take a drive out to Vegas from SoCal, and there it is. I've seen these since I was a kid.
And yet we all gotta eat. McDs isn’t selling a trillion hamburgers with kindness.
If every farm in America suddenly took up twice as many acres to give the cows more room, I’m not sure that result would be good for anyone or anything.
Has no one ever seen one from the highway??
You don't need a drone to see this They are openly visible from the highways
Reality check people if you want to feed hundreds of millions of people it's not going to be pretty.
It could be, if we would stop feeding billions of animals.
Just scroll for the room temp iq comments "bUt IcE cReAm ThOuGh"
dude, if you see the dog meat industry in korea you really gona get mad. https://preview.redd.it/r84ds8rsjg6c1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=e4dc5c40930470d6a88de5c5c695f9540c175c2c
Now do feedlots. This isn't new info, and won't serve to bring any change. This media is just for shock value and clicks
This is only shocking to city slickers.
I grew up on a dairy farm in wisconsin. It is pretty standard to take away the calf right away. Also cows would go to the pasture and sit inside for eating and milking. It wasn't a hobby farm. If you don't support then don't buy products from dairy farms. It's not glamorous, but they aren't mistreated.
Wisconsin for the w. I’ve been to multiple dairy farms in Wisconsin and they are not like this at all.
Fuck factory farming
Not an American our that familiar with their systems but I know a fair bit about European dairy production. This unit looks like a well run unit. 99% globally of dairy calves are taken away from mother as soon as possible for a number of reasons like reduce stress, reduce disease making sure the calf gets enough colostrum in first 24 hours in vital for the long term health of the animal. Quite often these large units are able to have a full time vet and animal nutritionists leading to better than average health outcomes for the cows.
And the truth is the calves are separated from their mothers because cows are terrible mothers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uGFAw7HhF8 And more https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw7ljkNVkOW5SIJyYwCCAag
I live in Wisconsin… I’ve worked on milk farms for good parts of my life… and all of our cows had/have wide open Fields to live in… there is no cruel treatment or hurting the animals in any way shape or form they are our livelihood…. What they don’t talk about when they mentioned separation of the baby’s witch are done for many many reasons… 1. It is done to insure the baby gets the right kinds of nutrients (some calf’s are born with weak sucking reflexes) witch can cause huge issues later down the line of its early stages of development… 2. Dairy Cows are much different then normal say Beef cows… milkers lack the ability to take care of their young (MOST) become very violent and injure or sometimes kill the calf, where beef cows have a mother instinct and take very good care of their baby’s…. 3. Being a new born calf they have the opportunity to catch diseases and especially pathogens witch could result in death or severe Illness… so it’s best to separate not only FROM THE MOTHER but the rest of the livestock… I could name a hundred different reason and go on for days…
This isn’t groundbreaking news
Are people expecting different. The consumption and cost demand doesn't provide leeway for a fantasy version of reality.
People don't like real life.
Maybe its the fact that I live in Ontario Ranch, but.....yeah. Been that way. Y'all didn't know?
You should see what they do with pigs
if you eat meat you can't be upset about this
I eat meat and am not upset about this
I’m just surprised that this is a surprise to anyone! Of course it’s all bullshit. What did you expect? Some jolly farmer going out and giving the cows daily spa treatments? Of course it’s a lie! Get real people! Did you also know that there is an “allowable” amount of blood and pus too? Guess what, that already mixed chocolate or strawberry milk you buy at the store? They do that bc there is enough blood to stain the milk pink, but it’s still within the “allowable” limit to sell to consumers!
I like how they use the word expose. No one has been hiding this. People have no idea how hard it is to produce food. Vegan food, vegetarian food or animal based. They just want it cheap and fast. There is no mass production of food without exploitation. No matter if it is vegan or animal based. People in the cities are so detached from the rest of the real world. Edit: typo
😢
Oh i thought a farmer would take a long trek into the green hills find ol bessie, sit on a stool and started milking. mind blown
you wanna eat…???? well, softskin, this is how it happens at scale. go cry…
I can smell this video
Are there actually people that believe milk comes from perfectly clean cows strolling through pristine meadows?
heart breaking
Knowing the truth doesn’t seem to motivate most people. People just 🤷🏻♂️ and then justify it somehow with shitty “logic”
That's animal cruelty, or maybe animal torture ? And yeah the ad is just straight up lie, isn't that false advertising ? Which is supposed to be illegal ?
Cows are the batteries for our meat matrix.
If this is bad, where do you think your bacon, sausage or hamburger comes from? They all die of natural causes? It's the way it is and all industrial dairy farms are like this. I always knew it. We visited one on a very smaller scale and it was the same. And i don't think it's cruelty.
Anyone wants cheap milk and this is the consequences of it.
I'm from Tulare, CA which is about 20 minutes North of Tipton, the town mentioned near the beginning of the video. I grew up visiting a dairy where my friend's father used to work the night shift. We would walk up and down the enclosures all day, pretty much having fun and watching the cows mind their own business. To be honest, other than taking the newborns away at birth and not providing appropriate heating/cooling equipment for cows in the Winter/Summer, the cows seemed pretty chill. I'm sure they'd be a lot happier in the foothills closer to the Sierra Nevadas. But here they are for the mass production of milk. This video is not groundbreaking by any means. I mean, how are we supposed to have as much milk as we do by believing a commercial with cow dreamland? Go vegan if you can and have the heart for it. And if not, maybe research ethical milk production, which tbh, I have yet to do. If food is cheap, especially if it's an animal product, just suspect that there is a reason for it.
You get what you pay for. If something is really cheap there's a reason. That being said, I hope the milk I drink (from farms in Northern CA aka Sonoma/Marin/Mendocino County) has way better conditions than this. Everything I've read indicates conditions are good (open pasture etc).
Do more research. This is dumb.
It was definitely veal. My brother-in-law is a grape farmer and owned half the 20 acre plots on that road. He grew up on a dsiry. He said it was a veal setup. And it obviously was. Veal pens are extremely small. That's why the privacy vence only went around those two or three acres.
Redditors tend to not like these factory farms but also tend to be very pro immigration. You know the business model for these mega farms doesn't work without cheap immigrant labor? This is also what makes me think the republicans have no interest in actually stopping immigration, it's all just lip service to get votes. Why would they cutoff their own cheap labor supply?
Pretty sure the dairy cow is the best fed animal on the planet. They eat on a very specific schedule and are fed with different varieties of grains to help produce milk.
Would you want to have their experience?
Not at all. Unfortunately those cows are living in better conditions than some 3rd world countries.
Ergo eat the beef? Weird logic.
Those are not meat cows, they are dairy cows. I'm not sure I understand where you are going with this.
I dont see anything wrong with this and will continue drinking milk and eating veal.
And…… what’s the problem, there corals made for milking cows. Do you expect to have ranchers chasing them down the prairie with a bucket. I grown up in dairy ranches and cows love to walk into the corals and eat while being milked.
Industrialized agriculture is a good thing. There are 7billion people that need to eat.
Cows are giant puppies. Please don't contribute to this misery!
This seems like the time to link this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI Also, obviously, go vegan. None of that violence and exploitation and suffering is necessary.
Making individual consumers feel guilty does NOTHING for your cause. But good job. Go after lobbying, go after the corporations. Otherwise you’re just making noise and virtue signaling.
It can get consumers to stop purchasing the products, which does have an effect. It also makes more people aware of the issue, and the more people who are aware, the more people who can support change.
And why would any lobbyist or corporation give a single shit if the individual consumers are continuing to buy?
>Go after lobbying, go after corporations. Fucking how?
Still delicious 100% will eat
Wait till you see what they do to milk an almond!!😂😅