{"id":5139,"date":"2023-01-01T18:19:36","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T23:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/?p=5139"},"modified":"2024-09-29T18:23:19","modified_gmt":"2024-09-29T22:23:19","slug":"dairy-is-udderly-suspect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/news\/dairy-is-udderly-suspect\/","title":{"rendered":"Dairy is Udderly Suspect"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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This content was originally published by the Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA), a project of Farm Forward from 2016 through 2024. JIFA is now the\u00a0Center for Jewish Food Ethics<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jewish tradition has long regarded dairy as intrinsic to the definition of kosher law.<\/h2>\n

Dairy is symbolic of ethnogeographic roots (\u201ca land flowing with milk and honey\u201d) and connected to ritual on holidays such as Shavu\u2019ot and Hanukkah. While the dairy source of our shepherd ancestors came primarily from small-scale herds of goats and sheep, most Jews now consume the most widely available commercial products from industrial dairies.<\/p>\n

Like other farmed species, today most dairy cows do not become pregnant through natural mating; they\u2019re forcibly impregnated through artificial insemination. After they give birth, they\u00a0produce more milk than ever before due to intensive artificial selection enabled by\u00a0DNA sequencing<\/a>. Per capita milk production has\u00a0doubled<\/a>\u00a0in the past forty years and continues to\u00a0climb<\/a>. If a dairy cow was producing just enough to feed her calf, she would only produce about one gallon of milk per day. Instead, the average American dairy cow now produces over 24,000 pounds of milk every year and averages more than\u00a07.5 gallons of milk<\/a>\u00a0per day.<\/p>\n

This unnaturally high milk load has created the dairy industry\u2019s two biggest welfare issues, decade after decade: mastitis and lameness. These painful conditions are exacerbated by the living conditions inside\u00a0factory farms<\/a>\u00a0where most American dairy cows live. Contrary to the happy pastoral scenes used in dairy advertising,\u00a0over 90 percent<\/a>\u00a0of cows live almost exclusively inside barns on concrete floors slick with sewage, where their joints and hooves bear the weight of a full udder most of their adult lives. Mastitis is an udder infection, and factory farms\u2019 high-humidity, low-ventilation environment promotes bacterial growth. Cows live in tie-stalls where they are tethered by the neck except when they are milked. This confinement severely limits opportunities for natural behaviors like exploring, socializing, and grooming. Industrial dairies are an animal welfare nightmare.<\/p>\n

Convenience comes at a cost, both to cows and to the planet. Whether raised for meat or dairy, cows are\u00a0leading\u00a0greenhouse gas emitters<\/a>. The processes required to raise them (e.g., alfalfa production for their feed) are very carbon-intensive, and the animals themselves\u00a0generate<\/a>\u00a0methane and nitrous oxide in massive quantities. Milk\u2019s\u00a0water footprint<\/a>\u00a0hovers around 50 gallons for every cup, contributing heavily to droughts and dry-ups in the American West. Consider also that many gallons of milk are required to produce a finished dairy product such as cheese. Cheese consistently ranks as one of the worst foods for the climate, generating\u00a0more GHGs<\/a>\u00a0than fish, poultry, or eggs.<\/p>\n

In keeping up with our appetite for ice cream and asiago, dairy production shows no signs of slowing down. Just four months after giving birth, dairy cows are\u00a0reimpregnated<\/a>\u00a0and will go through\u00a04-5 pregnancies<\/a>\u00a0before being slaughtered, usually for ground beef around age four, though their lifespans would normally reach twenty years.\u00a0Male calves are also sent to slaughter<\/a>, as are about a quarter of female calves and any cows who exhibit infertility or whose milk production has declined. Given the stress, disease, and generally poor body condition of the average dairy cow, it\u2019s little wonder that one in ten cows struggles to conceive. Those who do conceive don\u2019t wean their young naturally because standard industry practice separates calves from their mothers within 24 hours of birth. Calves naturally wean at an average age of about eight months. Female calves become replacements, growing up to become the next generation of milk-producers.<\/p>\n

From caring for animals\u2019 well-being to protecting the Earth\u2019s ecological balance, water resources, and climate, there are many\u00a0Jewish values-based reasons<\/a>\u00a0to commit to alternatives to industrial dairy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-product-labeling","category-animal-welfare"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}