to wish tax payers money was not paid to promote cows milk and dairy

[brt100]

Cards on table, I don't drink dairy as I'm health conscious, its for another animal with a very different body structure, diet and only for infants.

I get it that its delicious, well cheese is, but what I don't like is all these adverts on buses paid for partly by tax payers money to encourage people to drink milk. There are much better sources of calcium that the body can absob better so that argument is a con.

My sister gives her 7 yo a chease string every lunch time and thinks its healthy and vital.

We'll always differ in our views there because I think it's wrong to kill them at all, but it is interesting to hear some first hand information.

I was under yet impression they are killed at birth or exported for veal? Are you saying they don't get exported, and where are they slaughtered? Are they sent in cattle trucks to slaughter? Or slaughtered on your farm?
Genuinely interested by the way. Good to hear the lives they do have are cruelty free even if they don't live long.

I hear so many different things I never know what to believe so find it easier to stear clear completely.
The farm I mentioned in my previous post has a no slaughter policy, not sure how realistic that is long term though, and obviously the milk is expensive.

Benchmark
We take them in our small cattle trailer to our local small family-run abattoir which is 3 miles away. The meat is then sold to a couple of very local butchers.

There're so many false impressions about dairy farming in the UK ... it's such high welfare for both cow and calf - these threads make me sad about how folk think we treat our animals.

Thanks for sticking your head above the parapet to answer my question though!

I wish that we could buy milk & meat that was specifically from cows that grazed majority of the year on fresh grass. Such milk & the meat both have more omega fatty acids, too, iirc. There is a marketing niche to be filled in producing such high welfare-high quality products.

ps: if organic standard requires what i just said then please let me know.

www.thisisdairyfarming.com/discover/

lots of info on that link Benchmark if you want to find out more

The reason I was laughing at rescue cows was the idea they would in some way be treated differently to non rescue cows or would somehow have higher welfare milk produced in a different way to non rescue cows.

I think where all the information gets mixed up is that products derived from milk that come from abroad have low ethical standards, and this gets confused with local dairy.
Thanks for the link - no worries about the rescue cows, did perhaps get a bit defensive about them!
The difference in welfare is they are not sent for slaughter nor are their young, although the owner admits long term that plan may not work when she is overrun by cows! Although she does use a selection process to produce mostly female calves.

The picture on the pro dairy farming website doesn't make me want to have some milk

www.thisisdairyfarming.com/CropUp/listnav/media/90739/technology.jpg

www.thisisdairyfarming.com/discover/watch/a-calf-is-born/ shows how the calves are housed you would be hard pushed to say they look unhappy

current estimates are that three quarters of bull dairy calves in the UK are now raised for beef/rose veal.

The rescue cow place really isn't sustainable long term as you have realised, and actually other than the calves not being sent for beef the milk is being produced in exactly the same way.

I'm happy for people to criticise the dairy industry if they have actually spent time amongst dairy cattle, in milking parlours etc. But people who have done that generally don't think it is cruel - they see happy, healthy content animals who gather themselves at the farm gate in the morning waiting to be milked!

People are so far removed these days from farming they don't know what to believe which is why so much scaremongering is able to happen.

its a rotary milking parlour. They just go in for milking you know - they don't stay there all day!

lljkk the vast majority of British Beef and milk is produced in exactly that way. You would be hard pushed to find anything that wasn't. Its hardly a niche!

Milk is a good source of vit B2 as well as calcium, so long as it's not left in the sun.
Butter, from grass fed cows (which most of the UK ones are) is an excellent source of vitamins D and K2. K2, or menaquinone, is the only known activator for osteocalcin, a protein that places calcium in the body where it is needed. This helps to prevent both osteoporosis and hardening of the arteries, as calcium is pushed into the bones and removed from any atherosclerotic plaques that may be forming.
Vitamin D is becoming endemically deficient in the population, thanks to the anti-sun campaigns - vitamin D is a hormone as well as an anti-cancerous agent in the body.
Some hard cheeses are also a good source of menaquinone.
Bioactive yoghurts are useful in promoting beneficial gut bacteria; even though the levels are considered to be too low to change your gut bacteria profile, a daily biolive yoghurt can still make a difference. Better than Yakult to eat as well.

High levels of IGF (insulin-like growth factor) in milk may contribute to the increase in breast cancer, as it has receptors in breast tissue.

It's swings and roundabouts. I'll be continuing to eat butter over any other form of spread though; and I'll never give up cheese. Milk I can take or leave.

Are YBU? Not really, about the "taxpayers' money" - but milk/dairy isn't devil's food.

A lot of the "propaganda" about the dairy farming business comes from the USA, I believe, where it's a very different prospect for the cows. Many of them are grain/soya fed and kept in barns - no menaquinone to be had from the products of those cows!

Westmorland - this is the place
www.goodfoodnation.co.uk/cow-nation.php

Sorry if that link doesn't work, I've never done one.

It's in Devon, apparently the calves remain with the mothers, but obviously they are also milked.
When I emailed her about it, she said the 'hen nation' model is easy but the cow nation will prove difficult, but she seems pretty determined.
Interested to see what you think. It's the first time I've heard of anything like this.

ah I see its the company that Liz Jones from the Daily Mail is involved in.

Obviously that is a niche and on a very small scale and if people are willing to pay for it that is up to them. If all dairy farms worked in the same way the countryside would be overrun with old knackered cows, milk would be prohibitively expensive and people wouldn't buy it. The dairy farms would then close, and what would happen to the cows then?

I notice also that people in the link you showed clearly don't think that the milking itself is cruel as presumably they wouldn't do it if it was?

Yeah it would only work small scale but I doubt many people would pay for it for it to ever be large scale. She is involved but by no means started it.
Izzy lane is the founder and I genuinely think she wants to make a difference.

I don't think the milking process is what animal lovers object to, it's the slaughter and separation.
In the scenario you described I guess it would be the end to the dairy industry as we know it, and cows would cease to be bred to the same extent, but that wouldn't happen overnight.

I wish that we could buy milk & meat that was specifically from cows that grazed majority of the year on fresh grass.
if organic standard requires what i just said then please let me know.

lljkk, the Organic regs definitely require that : Here's a link to the Soil Association standards for Dairy Cows

Right BRT, just to confirm, you are anti-dairy solely for reasons of animal welfare? Because you have failed to answer any of the other points raised on this thread, so I can only assume that your mickey mouse branch of nutrionalism simply doesn't have any well-thought out, empircally based answers to the claim the dairy is "bad"

I take it you're a vegan, then? Or are your animal welfare concerns limited to cows?

Hello, did you not read my op? Im not the one turning this into animal welfare.

Its about what's healthy to consume, and milk isn't.

My op was all about health ffs!

Milk is healthy to consume! Like most things it's just about moderation.

brt

I'm afraid given your other threads you won't be taken seriously on this, I know on a previous thread you and I disagreed a hell of a lot BUT I am with you on this.

I think you are going to have to look really hard and find some concrete evidence. People with kids with allergies will never understand why a food is willingly excluded (I willing exclude it!!) and there seems to be very distorted views about Veganism on MN too. I also think you will struggle to find anything given that drs won't advise it as it is the number one thing people uses to make up shortfalls with their kids or keep their toddlers going during fussy periods, and butter and cream are what's suggested to add to foods for underweight children. It's also cheap. It's such a big part of British life, dairy industry is big, it's too relied on in that sense to really tell the truth about it.

I personally think people are too reliant on milk, it seems to be the answer to everything, toddlers are fed to sleep with it, they often take bottles of it everywhere and it's given out free in some pre schools and schools.

I don't think it's what it claims to be at all. It's the biggest allegen ever. Most people at some point in their lives will have a problem with milk. Be it an intolerant baby or a temporary lactose intolerence after a stomach bugs etc and as an adult I can't consume much without feeling a bit crappy.

I would love to know the truth I really would but I don't think it will be believed.

I have never drunk milk ( on off vegan and and always disliked it).
I had an atrocious 3rd pregnany and was told to drink plenty of milk to make up for the severe weight loss and inability to eat .
At birth my dd was odd- I knew something was wrong . She was ebf but at 9 weeks was fighting for her life .We luckily ended up at Addenbrooks where they performed a biopsy and the cause of her illness was found to be a severe milk allergy .
Just saying! I know this isn't normal but , for us its poison . In that case YANBU with your post - if indeed the adverts were tax payer funded .

Thanks for the clarification OP, you just seemed to go off on a tangent rather than put forward any reasons WHY milk is unhealthy,

Some people are allergic to dairy.

Some people choose not to consume it for other reasons.

Fine.

But proclaiming it unhealthy is just so much offensive first world shit that it's unbelievable. Please come back with some evidence. Anecdotal doesn't count. How come food has become the go-to psuedo-science for the dumb? No-one talks this much shit about the laws of physics without being asked to provide evidence.

Please come back in 20 years and tell us who has a more healthy and informed outlook on food, your DN or your own DC.

Ty read the china study. I listed in my op why I don't think its healthy.

People will look back in 100 years and laugh at how our taxes were used to advertise and promote to drink cows milk.

Cows milk is the perfect food for baby cows.

It's true that some people can tolerate it. But many cant but, like gluten, probably don't realise because the issues are subtle.

This is my hunch. I don't care if I'm mocked! My own health has improved immeasurably since chucking gluten and dairy.

I'm not waiting for the government nutritionists to tell me this. Christ, they are still banging on about low fat....