COW

[Suzi888]

chooseveg.com/blog/documentary-cow/

Anyone watched this… I can’t bring myself to watch it, but it’ll be coming to cinemas shortly.

What is the best milk substitute you have tried? Specifically when added to tea, I don’t mind the substitutes in cereal but my tea tastes grim without milk.

Violife cheese is amazing! And absolutely lovely on a pizza or cheese on toast! I actually prefer it to dairy cheese now.

@pintopanto

"There is already "vegan food for the masses". The crappy processed vegan foods sold over here form a tiny part of this.

To suggest that the only alternative to meat is just mass produced, crap processed vegan food is ignorant."

I second this Also, what do people think vegans ate decades ago when veganism wasn't so popular as it is today? They had almost no processed vegan food to buy at all and relied heavily on fresh produce or dried and tinned whole foods - which is cheap and healthy. I'm vegetarian, not vegan, but I don't want or like the faux meats and processed foods so prefer to stick to wholefoods

@Thinking2041 mostly their partnership with Blackstone in 2020 I think

www.greenmatters.com/p/oatly-controversy

@MorningStarling

"“Personally I don't really care, we're talking about cows/pigs/sheep/chickens here, not people. As long as the animals are fed/killed in a way that makes them tasty to eat, it's no big issue."

Your comment is gross. Your view is exactly the big issue. What gives you the right to think that you as a human deserves to live any more than every other animal? I assume you'd be happy to eat someone's pets then? They're not people...?

@BellatricksStrange

"Our morals and ethics are a social construct and social contract. Animals are not part of that contract, therefore we don't owe them anything. As far as I'm concerned, animals have zero rights.

If we want milk, and cows have it, we can go ahead and take it.

The only place I'd draw the line is wanton and gratuitous cruelty to animals. Only because I don't want to live in a cruel society, but not because we owe it to the animals."

Wow, what makes you think you're better than any other living being? You are contradicting yourself here... you don't want to live in a cruel society but you also don't think animals deserve not to be abused?

What.

Slaughtering animals to eat is an old fashioned concept.
Like, dunno, breathing? We've eaten meat for as long as we've been human, and before. There's a pretty strong argument that the protein in meat was what allowed us to become human.
We now know it makes people ill.
It's not as clear-cut as all that. Meat is a part of our ancestral diet, and hunter-gatherers who don't get enough of it have a higher rate of infant mortality and poorer overall health. We know now that vegetarians (or maybe it was vegans, can't recall) have lower bone density and are more prone to fractures. A vegan diet requires careful balancing and supplements. If meat eaters thought as hard about their diets as careful vegans do (and therefore ate less sugar and fewer refined carbs), we'd then have a fair comparison between diets with meat and diets without. Less careful vegans are prone to deficiency diseases. There are no established human cultures that are vegan (someone on a one of these threads did once try to convince us that Sri Lankans were vegan, but I've been there, and I know this is bollocks).

@Kennykenkencat - slaughtering farm animals for food is a normal concept. We are omnivores, our digestive system is set up for that.
What's not OK is the extensive farming and slaughter of animals for cheap meat and I fully agree on that. This is where we should begin to reassess our relationship with food.
I like my meat - I don't have to have it everyday. I prefer buying good quality meat and pay more for it, if it means that the animals are being treated well.
However, those animals have been bred and genetically changed to be farm animals. The cow breeds you see - the dairy cows need their daily milking. Merino sheep can't live comfortably without having their wool sheared regularly.
For all those animal hugging vegans - you don't want to slaughter animals or serve their purpose (give milk, wool, honey etc.) but you don't have a problem with the concept that those animals will disappear without their use.

Wow, what makes you think you're better than any other living being? You are contradicting yourself here... you don't want to live in a cruel society but you also don't think animals deserve not to be abused?

Humans are the apex predator and the only species who are capable of speech, advanced thinking and creating civilisations. That makes us different and certainly above the animals.
The animals you are talking about are the result of breeding by humans. They took animals from the wild and bred them to be what we know now, all the different breeds of cattle, poultry etc. None of those breeds is natural.
It is our duty to maintain the balance in nature and treat animals with dignity - that doesn't mean that the dairy cow won't be milked or that a cow bred for meat won't be slaughtered, but we should do it in a way that's not cruel.
Those animals serve a purpose. They wouldn't exist without that purpose.

@Scrowy the reason they queue up to get milked is most likely that they are uncomfortable/in pain. This is due to the fact they are bred to produce as much milk as possible, and the fact they have their baby taken away on day 2 (a baby that would usually be regularly suckling - much more frequently than they are artificially milked by machine). Their udders are horribly distended and mastitis is extremely common. In fact, it is so generally accepted that their milk will contain pus that there is actually a legal limit on the amount of pus that milk can contain (400 million pus cells per litre, if you are interested).

So please don't make out that cows get some kind of pleasure out of being milked - they don't; they just get relief from the pain and discomfort they are suffering day in, day out. Their lives are miserable.

"“Personally I don't really care, we're talking about cows/pigs/sheep/chickens here, not people. As long as the animals are fed/killed in a way that makes them tasty to eat, it's no big issue."

Excessive livestock farming contributes hugely to global warming. It's not just animals that are affected by climate change and habitat destruction - it's people too. Usually some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people on the planet.

It's not just about "be nice to cows and sheep". You're oversimplifying.

@EerieSilence another one. Nothing to contribute apart from “I love meat”.
It’s not a thread about eating meat. You don’t have to keep repeating it over and over again. Goady.

“Those animals serve a purpose. They wouldn't exist without that purpose.” What a ridiculous comment. I’d be perfectly fine with cows becoming extinct to be honest- save them leading utterly shit lives.

I fear we vegans are never going to come to any agreement with dairy and meat consumers. Some think animals have no rights, I think we have an obligation to not mistreat any living thing. All animals are capable of forming attachments, some would argue they are more genuine and pure than human attachments as there is not the same agenda. You can teach dog's consent by the way.

To answer the original question - oat milk and soy are my favourites!

@myowndevices thank you

I’ve got lots of things to try. Violife looked slightly dodgy but I really enjoyed it, as did the family. Beyond meat burgers with the violife, lettuce and tomato and also burgers with fried onions, chillis and sauce. Delicious!

@Scrowy the reason they queue up to get milked is most likely that they are uncomfortable/in pain. This is due to the fact they are bred to produce as much milk as possible, and the fact they have their baby taken away on day 2 (a baby that would usually be regularly suckling - much more frequently than they are artificially milked by machine). Their udders are horribly distended and mastitis is extremely common. In fact, it is so generally accepted that their milk will contain pus that there is actually a legal limit on the amount of pus that milk can contain (400 million pus cells per litre, if you are interested).

@Fr0thandBubble you know that @scrowy is a farmer, right?
Anyway, I think you mean somatic cells, which are not 'pus' cells.

@edithstourton I think you’re splitting hairs a bit there - there is a legal limit on the amount of somatic cells there can be in a litre of milk because at that level it is a clear sign of pus in the milk, caused by mastitis. Mastitis is rife in dairy cows.

Have you ever had mastitis? It’s bloody painful. Why put these poor animals through it so that you can drink something that isn’t even good for you? Don’t you feel sorry for them? - the pain they’re in, the fact their babies get dragged away at 2 days’ old, the fact they are artificially inseminated over and over again until they are slaughtered well before their natural life span? Where is your compassion?

I don't think I ever could give up milk or cheese, perhaps I could reduce the amount I use but I think I could go veggie. It is a very emotive topic!

@Fr0thandBubble, hm, no, you got your facts wrong. My understanding is that untreated mastitis can lead to pus in milk, when an abscess develops.

A healthy cow will have somatic cells in her milk - up to a quarter of the legal limit (100,000/ml). Over half the limit is considered to indicate mastitis. Dairies will pay less for milk with high somatic counts, while at the same time the cows will produce less milk, plus as you point out mastitis is a welfare issue. Farmers therefore work very hard to keep somatic counts down: margins in dairying are extremely tight, and farmers also care about the health and welfare of their animals.

The average somatic cell count in British milk in 2021 was 164,000/ml. Remember that 100,000/ml is a healthy cow, and that a cow with a count up to 200,000 may just be fighting off an infection and not actually be unwell.

@Fr0thandBubble, hm, no, you got your facts wrong. My understanding is that untreated mastitis can lead to pus in milk, when an abscess develops.

A healthy cow will have somatic cells in her milk - up to a quarter of the legal limit (100,000/ml). Over half the limit is considered to indicate mastitis. Dairies will pay less for milk with high somatic counts, while at the same time the cows will produce less milk, plus as you point out mastitis is a welfare issue. Farmers therefore work very hard to keep somatic counts down: margins in dairying are extremely tight, and farmers also care about the health and welfare of their animals.

The average somatic cell count in British milk in 2021 was 164,000/ml. Remember that 100,000/ml is a healthy cow, and that a cow with a count up to 200,000 may just be fighting off an infection and not actually be unwell.

Goddamn, posted twice. Sorry.

[quote Fr0thandBubble]@Scrowy the reason they queue up to get milked is most likely that they are uncomfortable/in pain. This is due to the fact they are bred to produce as much milk as possible, and the fact they have their baby taken away on day 2 (a baby that would usually be regularly suckling - much more frequently than they are artificially milked by machine). Their udders are horribly distended and mastitis is extremely common. In fact, it is so generally accepted that their milk will contain pus that there is actually a legal limit on the amount of pus that milk can contain (400 million pus cells per litre, if you are interested).

So please don't make out that cows get some kind of pleasure out of being milked - they don't; they just get relief from the pain and discomfort they are suffering day in, day out. Their lives are miserable.[/quote]
It's really not that simple a modern Holstein cow may produce 70 litres a day. A calf may drink 10, 15 at a push.
She won't magically get rid of the rest herself, not if you want to be humane.
It's awful that they have been bred to do that but that's where we are now.

Also while 400 may be the legal limit for somatic cells, most farmers would lose their milk contract isn't it was consistently above 250.

Sorry - if it wasn't consistently BELOW 250

@Edithstourton

"A healthy cow will have somatic cells in her milk - up to a quarter of the legal limit (100,000/ml). Over half the limit is considered to indicate mastitis. Dairies will pay less for milk with high somatic counts, while at the same time the cows will produce less milk, plus as you point out mastitis is a welfare issue. Farmers therefore work very hard to keep somatic counts down: margins in dairying are extremely tight, and farmers also care about the health and welfare of their animals.

The average somatic cell count in British milk in 2021 was 164,000/ml. Remember that 100,000/ml is a healthy cow, and that a cow with a count up to 200,000 may just be fighting off an infection and not actually be unwell."

So, you are saying the average dairy cow has well over 50% more pus-indicating cells in their milk than a healthy cow? I'm not sure how these facts are helping your argument .

But hey, you keep on enjoy drinking that pus, and screw the cows, eh?

"and farmers also care about the health and welfare of their animals"

And this? This is just absolute rubbish. No one who cared about animals could be involved in this industry.

@Fr0thandBubble

"and farmers also care about the health and welfare of their animals"

And this? This is just absolute rubbish. No one who cared about animals could be involved in this industry.

You cannot sell an unhealthy animal. an unhealthy animal will not give birth to healthy offspring. An unhealthy animal will not produce milk. It's as simple as that.

You can sell them though to pet food companies!