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There is only one obvious reason that cows generate milk, and that is to feed calves, not humans. It is highly unlikely that nature intended us, as the human species, to suckle a bovine’s mammary gland for sustenance. What causes a cow’s body to produce the hormones which initiate the lactation process, quite obviously, is pregnancy and birthing.

In order to keep cattle in factory farms generating milk to support the ever rising demand, the industry makes sure that every cow is impregnated each year. This fact alone means that each cow in the industry lives at least 6 months out of every year of their lives, pregnant.

In truth, even with the startling number in cattle population utilized by factory farms all over the world, which are equal to nearly one third that of the human population, mass doses of hormones must be introduced into each cow in order to cater to the aforementioned demand. For cows, udders bloat well beyond normality, causing severe pain, discomfort and often, they drag on the ground leading to sores and infection. Large quantities of over 50 different antibiotics are used to keep these infections in order. All of this, partnered with the growth hormones, go into each glass of milk that you drink, and that is not all.

A legal cubic centimeter of milk is allowed to contain up to 750,000 animal blood/puss cells and 20,000 living bacteria. This says nothing of the herbicides, pesticides and dioxins which are common in the milk you drink at up to 200 times what is considered to be safe levels. Some of the hormones used to keep cows pumping out milk, such as Insulin-like Growth Factor One(IFG-1), have been scientifically linked to breast, prostate and colon cancer in human consumers. Still thirsty?

Some of you might say,” Well, I don’t drink milk, but I eat cheese and butter”.

I am sorry to inform you that your cheese contains up to ten times the amount of blood/puss cells and living bacteria because it takes ten pounds of milk to produce one pound of cheese. Butter contains up to 20 times the amount. There is a myth that says we must eat dairy products to stay healthy. This is completely false and we can garner the sufficient amount of calcium needed daily from other sources such as supplements or deep green vegetation. Actually, a cow’s milk is a most unhealthy liquid for humans with serious medical issues stemming from its consumption.

With the incredible level of fat and cholesterol alone, one wonders why anyone consumes dairy for simple health reasons. This includes anything labeled as “organic” as well. Just because the label says “organic” does not mean you are safe from the hormones, pesticides, blood/puss or bacteria.

On an ethical level, we must also consider the extreme cruelty caused by the dairy industry. Dairy cows lead a miserable existence, many would agree, much worse than those slated to be bred for beef alone. They spend the majority of their lives connected to painful machinery, on massive amounts of antibiotics and hormones, lactating up to 10 or 15 gallons of milk per day. This is completely unnatural, pressing cows to produce milk at over 10 times what they would normally create without human interference.

Due to the horrible stress, cows often do not live very long, possibly just over 5 years or so before falling to exhaustion and poor milk yield. These mother cows will then be killed while their daughters take their places. A cow is not a living being under these circumstances, they are simply a machine utilized to generate milk for humans. There is no other way to view the truth and we, as a race, should be ashamed.

For calves, who are generally snatched from their mothers within days of birth, the cruel reality of being a slave to humanity has either just begun, or is about to end. Most male calves are sent off to spend their short lives(roughly 15 weeks) encased within small crates which they can not even turn around in until they are killed horrifically for veal. Again, the females sometimes take the place of their mothers or they are slaughtered for rennet, which is the inner lining of their fourth stomach, an ingredient used in many cheeses.

And whilst we inflict these acts of cruelty and utter barbarity, our world crumbled about us.

The methane we introduce into our ecosystem through factory farming by raising such an immense number of cattle and the human starvation factor associated with the agriculture industry should be more than enough reason for the realization that it is time for a change. It requires a 50 to 1 grain ratio to feed a cow as opposed to a human being and water has become even more scarce. 18,000 children die each day from starvation, nearly 40,000 humans in total. 1 in 6 human beings do not have clean or safe drinking water and several thousand humans die every day from contaminated water sources, whilst we expend up to 25 gallons of fresh water per day, on each dairy cow. Why are we growing food to feed animals that we torture and slaughter for their milk or flesh in order to feed only some of the human population?

We are destroying all life on the planet by exploiting animals, which vastly increases global methane output and strips our lands bare through intense overgrazing, whilst humans all over the world are dying of starvation, or living in drought. We have already elevated our average global temperature an entire degree in less that 20 years, leading to the melting of polar ice and arctic permafrost which sends even further methane into our atmosphere. This is creating a greenhouse effect more deadly than any carbon output expelled by the burning of fossil fuel. Global Warming will become a term of the past before it is even completely accepted as fact by every human around the globe and it will be replaced with the term “Global Heating”. Why are we destroying all life on our planet in the name of feeding more death to our children?

Combine our thirst for dairy, our meat addiction and our sheer population increase over the past 50 years. What you will find is a civilization bent on self destruction. For me, this is not rocket science, it is simple morality gone wrong. As with much concerning our decadence, the human species is in for a rude awakening. Our repeated rape of the natural world with no remorse is quickly turning on us. To quote Chief Oren Lyons, a Native American Faithkeeper, “You’re either going to change your values or you’re not going to survive. I tell you, the Earth has no mercy. You abide that law or suffer the consequence. Business as usual is over”

Anthony Damiano
Founder of AELLA