Vegetarians

[Joey]

[Axtech]

[Joey]

[Axtech]

[superboots]

[Axtech]

[Joey]

[superboots]

[sandsleeper]

[Joey]

[sandsleeper]

[Soozy]

[nelison]

[sandsleeper]

[Axtech]

Once again, what's with the titles? Of course you don't have to give up certain things to be something. Just be yourself and eat what you want to eat. If you find it hard to give up some foods, either don't give them up, or find some supliments for them.

[Joey]

Heh ... there's way more to it then just simply draining their milk. What’s wrong with drinking milk? Don’t dairy cows need to be milked?

In order for a cow to produce milk, she must have a calf. "Dairy" cows are impregnated every year in order to keep up a steady supply of milk. In the natural order of things, the cow’s calf would drink her milk (eliminating her need to be milked by humans). But dairy cows’ babies are taken away within a day or two of birth so that humans can have the milk that nature intended for their calves. Female dairy calves may be slaughtered immediately or raised to be future dairy cows. Male dairy calves are confined for 16 weeks to tiny veal crates too small for them even to turn around in so that their flesh, sold as veal, will be atrophied and nonmuscular. Then these weak, 4-month-old youngsters are sent to the slaughterhouse.

The current high demand for dairy products requires that cows be pushed far beyond their natural physical limits, genetically engineered and fed growth hormones in order to produce huge quantities of milk. Even the few farmers who choose not to raise animals intensively must both eliminate the calf (who would otherwise drink the milk) and send the mother to an early death when her milk production wanes.

Why shouldn’t people drink milk and eat dairy products? Cows don’t need to be killed to produce milk, right?

At least 5 million cows raised for milk in the United States live on factory farms under conditions that cause them tremendous suffering. They do not graze contentedly in fields; they live in cramped, concrete-floored milking pens where they are milked by machines that often cause cuts and injuries that would not occur if people did the milking.

In addition, while many consumers have heard about the cruelty of the veal industry, most people don’t know that the dairy and veal industries are inextricably linked. Cows, like humans, only give milk after they’ve had a baby. Thus, in the eyes of the farmer, the cows’ offspring are simply a byproduct of this milk-production cycle. Perhaps the greatest pain suffered by cows in the dairy industry is the repeated loss of their young, which is quite traumatic to these extremely maternal animals. Female calves may join the ranks of the milk producers, but the males are generally taken from their mothers within 24 hours of birth and sold at auction either for the notorious veal industry or to beef producers.

Within 60 days, the cow will be impregnated again. For about seven months of her next nine-month pregnancy, the cow will continue to be milked for the fluid meant for her older calf—and this cycle is repeated until her milk production wanes, at which time she is sent to slaughter, most likely to be ground up into fast-food burgers. Calves will continue to suffer as long as there is a market for dairy products

[nelison]

well then...

[Joey]

[sandsleeper]

[happening fish]