It’s entirely possible to take only excess milk from a cow, especially as she will continue to lactate for as long as you continue to milk her. But I also feel it’s important for you to know that in the industrial dairy industry what they do is get her pregnant, take the calf away immediately after birth, and then get her pregnant again soon after.
I’m not sure what you mean. She would be feeding the calf if they didn’t take it away from her. I’m not sure what percentage of them are allowed to grow up, given the popularity of veal.
They will continue to produce milk, but in factory farming they’re impregnated roughly once a year to keep the amount of milk high and to give it more marketable qualities.
My family took care of a small herd of dairy goats when I was growing up. They could definitely make their displeasure known if you tried to make them do something they didn’t want to (especially when they were very nearly your own weight). Milking time? Most days they were perfectly happy to jump up on the stand for us to relieve their udders for them, sometimes even before we’d gotten everything set up.
I am careful where I get my milk from because the big dairy institutions are rather problematic. And I agree that the broad disempowerment and incarceration inherent in farming is an issue on its own. But saying that milk is always, unequivocally, unwanted theft (and respectively that farms provide an unqualified worse life) is just the other side of the same human-exceptionalism coin – you’re removing their agency to say “yes”.
Ah, good to know you have a argument ready to allow you to move the goalposts, and that you won’t accept any solutions for achieving utopia that don’t come out of the gate already perfect.
To be equally blunt, my response wasn’t “all eight billion people should drink small-farm milk”, it was “you’re being anthropocentric in a very similar vein to saying all other animals are automata.” If you really do think humans are the only species which can have and express desires and dislikes, then enjoy your biological essentialism.
So you’re one of those people who think it’s impossible to have sex when you don’t share a language, then? Consent is a very good model to live by. Blind devotion to the form of consent while ignoring the actual purpose behind it (i.e. to simply make sure nobody regrets what’s happening, in the moment or later) twists it into something it was never meant to be.
And I wasn’t talking about sex. I was talking about two species learning to read each other’s body language, and to communicate despite the barrier. A goat freely jumping onto the platform where she knows she’ll be milked, without any fear of punishment if she doesn’t, is her agreeing to be milked. It might not meet some mythologized standard of “consent” where all parties involved practically have to sign a contract saying they know every minute detail of what might happen, and the exact likelihood of all potential future consequences years down the line, but that’s not what consent was designed to solve.
The tea model is consent. The tea model can be fulfilled without relying on any specific wording, or even words at all. Anything more complex than the tea model is either meant for risky kink (note: milking a goat is not risky kink) or is over-ritualizing the process for purity points.
The calf grew up already.
It’s entirely possible to take only excess milk from a cow, especially as she will continue to lactate for as long as you continue to milk her. But I also feel it’s important for you to know that in the industrial dairy industry what they do is get her pregnant, take the calf away immediately after birth, and then get her pregnant again soon after.
You realize that these cows are not feeding calves, right? **It’s all excess. **
If you keep extracting the milk, they keep producing it, even years after their offspring has grown up.
I’m not sure what you mean. She would be feeding the calf if they didn’t take it away from her. I’m not sure what percentage of them are allowed to grow up, given the popularity of veal.
They will continue to produce milk, but in factory farming they’re impregnated roughly once a year to keep the amount of milk high and to give it more marketable qualities.
That’s not a justification for stealing the milk. It’s not yours.
My family took care of a small herd of dairy goats when I was growing up. They could definitely make their displeasure known if you tried to make them do something they didn’t want to (especially when they were very nearly your own weight). Milking time? Most days they were perfectly happy to jump up on the stand for us to relieve their udders for them, sometimes even before we’d gotten everything set up.
I am careful where I get my milk from because the big dairy institutions are rather problematic. And I agree that the broad disempowerment and incarceration inherent in farming is an issue on its own. But saying that milk is always, unequivocally, unwanted theft (and respectively that farms provide an unqualified worse life) is just the other side of the same human-exceptionalism coin – you’re removing their agency to say “yes”.
re: @[email protected]
cc: @[email protected]
There’s no sustainable way to do this for 8 billion people, so frankly I don’t give a shit.
Ah, good to know you have a argument ready to allow you to move the goalposts, and that you won’t accept any solutions for achieving utopia that don’t come out of the gate already perfect.
To be equally blunt, my response wasn’t “all eight billion people should drink small-farm milk”, it was “you’re being anthropocentric in a very similar vein to saying all other animals are automata.” If you really do think humans are the only species which can have and express desires and dislikes, then enjoy your biological essentialism.
re: @[email protected]
I believe in verbal consent and think your argument is uncomfortably similar to rape apologia - you can just tell she wants it!
So you’re one of those people who think it’s impossible to have sex when you don’t share a language, then? Consent is a very good model to live by. Blind devotion to the form of consent while ignoring the actual purpose behind it (i.e. to simply make sure nobody regrets what’s happening, in the moment or later) twists it into something it was never meant to be.
And I wasn’t talking about sex. I was talking about two species learning to read each other’s body language, and to communicate despite the barrier. A goat freely jumping onto the platform where she knows she’ll be milked, without any fear of punishment if she doesn’t, is her agreeing to be milked. It might not meet some mythologized standard of “consent” where all parties involved practically have to sign a contract saying they know every minute detail of what might happen, and the exact likelihood of all potential future consequences years down the line, but that’s not what consent was designed to solve.
The tea model is consent. The tea model can be fulfilled without relying on any specific wording, or even words at all. Anything more complex than the tea model is either meant for risky kink (note: milking a goat is not risky kink) or is over-ritualizing the process for purity points.
re: @[email protected]
Weren’t these species selectively bred to have excess milk for us?
Cows don’t have a concept of property.
Cows have to be tricked into letting their milk down. They won’t let you steal it otherwise.
Do you have a source for that or are you just guessing because it’s a cow?
I don’t need to guess. Because it’s a cow.