I was quite busy when I answered your post this morning, cosmicforce, and I made a logical (or illogical as you may perceive it) leap that I didn't really explain. When I read your research on leptin, the right blood type diet somehow came up, with the doctor's name who wrote the book about it, and then I researched his name and came up with a lot of material. Then I wrote back to you, but of course did not explain how I had gotten where I did. The right blood type diet is kind of like the yogi diet actually, in that there are different foods for different folks. I am not sure what I think about that--there is one blood type where stomach cancer is more prevalent, and other some other diseases relate a tiny bit to certain blood types. Where I guess I disagree is in this doctor's assertion that primitive Africans ate a lot of meat, and therefore present day people with the same blood type should, as well. There is no evidence that they ate much meat, as I believe you acknowledged in your return post. Also, there are huge detriments to eating much meat in addition to the environmental degradation, as you also said.
So, now on to cows. I do think it is possible that at some point there have been a few happy cows. Those Hindus need some cow birth control, though, don't they? Too many cows to take care of.
Anyway, dairy cows in America lead mostly horrible, short lives before their milk production gives out and they become hamburger. While it is true that on organic farms they have more room to move around and better feed, their calves are still taken away from them within 24 hours of birth, and the male calves are still sold for veal. Cows are naturally sociable herd animals with varying personalities and temperments, and they are good mammal mothers who love their calves. So I would argue that no dairy cows in America are treated well. I did read that in some more primitive cultures with dairy cows, the farmers would allow the calves to stay with their mothers and drink at least some of her milk. Not now.
Cattle have been a part of American identity since the days of the Old West. With all the advertisements for the milk industry in the past couple of decades, dairy cows in particular have gotten a great reputation as wholesome, lovable farm animals -- which they are, when treated right. Cows (female cattle) have nine-month pregnancies like humans, and they nurse their calves around 16 times a day until the calves are around 7 months to a year old. They stay very close with their offspring even after they stop nursing, and they become very distressed if they are separated. Cattle live in large herds (as many as 300 animals), and within each herd the cows and bulls babysit for one another's calves so they can take turns grazing. They are herbivores, and they generally only eat grass and vegetables. Cattle are ruminants, which means their stomachs are divided into four compartments and part of their digestive process involves regurgitating and chewing their partially digested food, which is called cud. Cattle generally chew their cud for around eight hours each day. They can live for 20 years or more.
On a dairy factory, cows have little contact with the loving farmers you see in cheese commercials. They are fed, watered, and milked by machines, and are not allowed to graze in grassy pastures. Instead they are confined to indoor stalls or grassless pens, injected with rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone), and fed a steady diet of grain and animal byproducts, both of which are unnatural and difficult for the cows to digest.
Starting when they are about a year and a half old, the cows are impregnated constantly -- this is because in order to produce milk, like all mammals, cows must first give birth. So the cycle begins: the cow is impregnated and gives birth. Her calf is taken away just a day or two after it is born. Because of the rBGH, she produces as much as ten times as much milk as her calf would have needed, all of which is instead taken for humans to drink. Other health effects of rBGH include chronic mastitis (an infection linked to overproduction of milk, which causes her udder to become swollen and very painful) and hoof irritation. About two to three months after she gives birth, the cow is impregnated again. She has a break of just a few weeks between when she stops lactating (producing milk) and when she gives birth and starts the cycle all over again. After completing this cycle just two or three times, the cow's body can no longer keep up with the intensive milk production caused by the hormones, and she is sent to slaughter. Meat from the exhausted dairy cattle is considered very low quality, and is most often ground up and sold as hamburger meat.
Since dairy cows produce so many calves, there is a steady supply of very young cattle for the veal industry. Veal calves are taken from their mothers within the first two days after birth, sometimes even before they are able to walk on their own. "Milk-fed" veal, which is considered desirable by many people because of its white color, actually comes from calves that are fed a milk substitute that lacks iron. Iron is an important mineral in the diets of many animals including humans, and without it the animals become very weak. The calves are kept in tiny crates that don't allow them to exercise at all -- because of the lack of exercise and the poor diet, the meat from these animals is very soft. The young calves are not able to play or run around, and they show signs of distress and frustration, like sucking on the bars of their crates. After just 4-6 months, the weak, malnourished calves are slaughtered.
factoryfarm.org |
