Spoiler: milk cows get murdered as well.
A milk cow is productive for about 5 years, after which they usually get slaughtered for pet food.
In that time, they need to have about 3 calves, to continue producing “good returns” amount of milk daily. Two of those calves are not needed to replace the cow, so they get - guess what? - slaughtered and processed to pet food.
Stupid me grew up next to a milk farm and didn’t realize that until way later than I care to admit.
Also, I still eat cheese (reduced amounts) and that’s a moral dilemma for me.
That ethical problem could be solved (well, not if you are “fully” vegan, and view even keeping pets and livestock, unacceptable), by doing good small-scale production. Factory farming producing the inhuman conditions, is needed to make the operations economically sustainable, in the way it is build into capitalist systems. But if you would keep the cows well, milk products could be made quite ethically… Now of course the costs needed to do that would make milk extremely expensive, and small-scale could not replace the massive demand, so people would have to consume way less anyway.
Spoiler: milk cows get murdered as well. A milk cow is productive for about 5 years, after which they usually get slaughtered for pet food. In that time, they need to have about 3 calves, to continue producing “good returns” amount of milk daily. Two of those calves are not needed to replace the cow, so they get - guess what? - slaughtered and processed to pet food.
Stupid me grew up next to a milk farm and didn’t realize that until way later than I care to admit.
Also, I still eat cheese (reduced amounts) and that’s a moral dilemma for me.
That ethical problem could be solved (well, not if you are “fully” vegan, and view even keeping pets and livestock, unacceptable), by doing good small-scale production. Factory farming producing the inhuman conditions, is needed to make the operations economically sustainable, in the way it is build into capitalist systems. But if you would keep the cows well, milk products could be made quite ethically… Now of course the costs needed to do that would make milk extremely expensive, and small-scale could not replace the massive demand, so people would have to consume way less anyway.