Why should I go VEGAN??

Dairy cows have to have babies yearly to produce milk. This is the milk meant for their babies. It's like me putting breast milk in your coffee .. fancy some? lol ..These babies, if boys are most often dragged away from mothers at birth & either left to die (I have seen footage, it's horrendous) in a pen next to the mother whilst she calls & bellows for her baby .. (and they do, they cry out to their child, it's heartbreaking) All so I can have milk on my weetabix! Then when she becomes too old at just 4-5 yrs of age (the normal life expectancy for a Fresian cow is 25-30 YEARS!) she is taken for slaughter. Some dairy cows are too weak through over milking to walk to slaughter so they are carried by forklift and dumped where they need to be.

Cows are my favourite animal, such gentle giants and it kills me this happens

With chickens (for eggs) I presumed that male chicks were what people ate & female chicks were layers. Wrong. Again, the boys are not wanted. They obviously don't lay and apparently their flesh is too tough for meat, so they are killed at 1-2 days old. Methods are usually to be suffocated or poured into a vat of water & electrocuted, or (still used regularly in USA but not so much here, although there are still places that use them) are grinding machines. They go in alive. People talk about hell, but I think that these slaughter houses are hell.

Dairy cows have to have babies yearly to produce milk. This is the milk meant for their babies. It's like me putting breast milk in your coffee .. fancy some? lol ..These babies, if boys are most often dragged away from mothers at birth & either left to die (I have seen footage, it's horrendous) in a pen next to the mother whilst she calls & bellows for her baby .. (and they do, they cry out to their child, it's heartbreaking) All so I can have milk on my weetabix! Then when she becomes too old at just 4-5 yrs of age (the normal life expectancy for a Fresian cow is 25-30 YEARS!) she is taken for slaughter. Some dairy cows are too weak through over milking to walk to slaughter so they are carried by forklift and dumped where they need to be.

Cows are my favourite animal, such gentle giants and it kills me this happens

With chickens (for eggs) I presumed that male chicks were what people ate & female chicks were layers. Wrong. Again, the boys are not wanted. They obviously don't lay and apparently their flesh is too tough for meat, so they are killed at 1-2 days old. Methods are usually to be suffocated or poured into a vat of water & electrocuted, or (still used regularly in USA but not so much here, although there are still places that use them) are grinding machines. They go in alive. People talk about hell, but I think that these slaughter houses are hell.

I'd already mentioned this earlier in the thread, however:
Calves in dairy farms are bucket raised if they are to be kept - if they are not (dairy bulls, most lactations are to a meat breed) they are shot. This is not news. If they were left to starve Animal Health would be all over the farmer concerned (and quite rightly too). The ones to be kept are the ones placed in a pen next to their mother precisely so they can have contact etc but not suckle - its an effort to reduce stress.

The average life expectancy of a holstein is 25 years? Do me a favour - go and talk to someone who has kept cows. But of course they are slaughtered after their useful life, meat animals are slaughtered before this, obviously (pre 36 months). They are slauughtered to the same standards as meat cows.

Any place there is livestock there will be dead/ill stock. I can (just about) carry a sick sheep - now try and do that with a cow please. Of course they are moved by loader if they cant walk.

Male chicks are usually gassed, for what its worth. All laying hens are slaughtered after the first cycle - again, subject to the same regs as any other slaughter.

A lot of the propaganda is emotive bull****, designed to make you anthropomorphise.

If you dont like meat, dont eat it - and as I have said, kudos to vegans for realising that the wool, egg and dairy industry ARE the meat industry, but if you are comfortable with a swift death (as I am) then there is no reason not to eat meat.

a couple things

1) it's more than the killing (and throwing chicks into a grinder is pretty messed up), it's how they're raised. I'm all for raising your own animals and slaughtering them for food. I'm not against that AT ALL. But I'm against the disgusting practices that take place at factory farms, such as:

- Chickens' beaks are sanded down to a nub by a belt sander - imagine someone did that to your teeth. How would that feel?
- Chickens raised for meat are now so genetically modified, that many can't even STAND UP because their breast is so large.
- You don't address the forced pregnancy of cows to make them lactate nonstop. That's gotta be a special kind of hell.
- Those chicks that get thrown into a meat grinder? Where does the chicken "by-product" go? Back into the food they feed the other chickens. So we force them to eat themselves. Nice.


2) What about those environmental effects? Being the second highest contributor to air pollution and global warming - ahead of all traffic? (again, not propaganda - just pesky facts)

3) There are appreciable health risks with the typical American consumption of meat. In the last hundred years, our meat consumption has risen by 500%. That means we're all eating 5x more meat than a typical American in 1900.

Guess what else has risen by about 500%? Prevalence of heart disease, stroke, cancer, etc.

Now I'm not going to ignore that increased methods detection plays a role in that number rising, but I would venture to guess it's not the only contributor. Why? Because when a man who has eaten copious amounts of meat his whole life, and is now pre-heart surgery due to blocked arteries, is treated with a plant-based diet, his arterial blockage dissipates DRAMATICALLY in a short period of time. Surgery can be delayed for years, if it's even needed at all. This isn't anecdote, this comes from studies. Peer-reviewed an everything.

If eating a veggie based diet can reverse heart disease, don't you think that eating it your whole life will help PREVENT it?

To SteveJWatson
You make valid points.

"Any place there is livestock there will be dead/ill stock. I can (just about) carry a sick sheep - now try and do that with a cow please. Of course they are moved by loader if they can’t walk. "

Interesting point – of course you would not wish to carry a terminally sick animal; either financially or humanely. It would make sense to bring a quick end to suffering. However, I guess the ultimate view of the vegan society as a whole would be that everyone switches to a vegan lifestyle and so you would not have the worry of carrying or despatching sick livestock as you would be an arable farmer.

Of course, this would permanently change the landscape and possibly demand more acreage for crop production – I don’t know – but maybe there is already enough acreage as we wouldn’t be growing drops to feed animals for consumption?

"Male chicks are usually gassed, for what its worth."

True – actually they are dropped into a large dustbin and when the bin is full the gas canister is thrown in and the lid secured, so many chicks at the bottom of the bin actually slowly suffocate as they are smothered by the chicks above them. Not the quick death one would imagine then. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I have seen this process myself.

Considering then that animal slaughter is not as swift as the meat market would have us believe, my choice is to change to a vegan diet and lifestyle. It is of course, each to their own.