"There's nothing wrong with milk!"
     "You have to milk cows anyway. They like it!"
     "But I need strong bones!"

     if i had a nickle for every time i'd hear these half-baked arguments, i could... well, maybe buy a few cartons of soy milk or something...
the truth of the matter is that there IS something wrong with drinking milk, cows do NOT need us to milk them, and you do NOT need milk to get the strong bones that the dairy industry promises you'll have when you guzzle milk every day.
     here is a short list of facts associated with the dairy industry that might change the way you think about your diet...

-because of the use of hormones, drugs, and genetic manipulation, dairy cows are being produced as large, angular animals with large over-distended udders and distorted hind legs, which makes it extremely painful to stand, walk, or even lie on hard surfaces.
-in 1960 the average cow produced about 20 pounds of milk a day. in 1998 they averaged about 45 pounds a day, which is significantly more than in nature. in addition, a cow in nature can live up to 25 years, but the average dairy cow only lives 3-5 years.
-about 10 months out of the year, dairy cows are kept in cramped, narrow concrete stalls and only brought out to be milked two or three times a day. this is also absurd and cruel because a mother cow making a natural amount of milk would feed her calf five to seven times daily, while the genetically altered cows making twice the milk are only milked half that amount.
-on average, mother cows spend just a couple hours with her calf before it is taken from her forever. as a mammal, the mother cow's body is ready to feed her young with milk, but being seperated from her young, this milk will be put back into the production line. both mother and calf will bellow and moan for each other for days. this is after 7 of the 9 months in her pregnancy are spent STILL producing 45 pounds of milk daily.
-half of the calves born to dairy cows are male and therefore "useless" to dairy farmers. this means male calves will either be killed within days of their birth for a cheaper cut of veal, sent to veal farms where they will be killed shortly, or raised for beef.
-because of the dairy cow's environment and body full of hormones, they are highly suseptable to disease, infections, and other health problems. the USDA's "dairy management practices" report indicated that about 1 in 7 cows suffers from a painful and often deadly bacterial udder infection called mastitis.
-dairy cow's are fed rich, high-energy feed which cause serious metabolic disorders, and painful inflamation of the hoof, both of which can be fatal.
-when dairy cows are "spent" they are not put to pasture as the myth of the contented dairy cow goes. they are put to slaughter. roughly 2/3 of all cattle slaughtered are from dairy cows. this is something that many vegetarians and vegetarian sympathizers don't understand. by supporting dairy, one is directly supporting the beef and veal industries.
-"free range" or "organic" milk or eggs are nothing more than a marketing ploy to keep dairy and meat in peoples' diets. there are no clear laws or guidlines as to what "free range" is and there's no assurance of how cows on any farm are treated. the same unrealistic and cruel milk production rates are still required to turn a profit.
-all of this has become the industry norm because mistreating the animals is profitable. it is more economic to put cows in shoddy housing, feed them and pump them full of dangerous food and chemicals, and consider them to be unfeeling money machines than to treat them as feeling, living creatures.

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