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Is dairy good or bad?

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Replies

  • ccrdragon
    ccrdragon Posts: 3,365 Member
    being out-hunted by bigger/better/stronger/faster/smarter hunters is ENTIRELY natural
  • Gallowmere1984
    Gallowmere1984 Posts: 6,626 Member
    ccrdragon wrote: »
    being out-hunted by bigger/better/stronger/faster/smarter hunters is ENTIRELY natural

    Hell, I'm still trying to figure out how "sympathy for our food" made it through an evolutionary cycle.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    TR0berts wrote: »
    rankinsect wrote: »
    salembambi wrote: »
    bad for you

    & especially for the calf and mother cows

    Those cows would be in a lot of pain if they were unmilked. Dairy cows are upset with you if you fail to milk them on schedule.

    Totally wrong.
    Cows are forcefully inseminated and the moment they give birth the baby calf is ripped away before it can even walk or open it's eyes. The babies are put into cages (some) for veal and the mother cows are milked, for their milk. The entire process is painful and unethical. But yeah... keep listening to the multi-billion dollar dairy industry when they tell you milk does a body good.

    Oh, and momma cows are also upset when their babies are taken away from them.

    The words Ethical farming and slaughter just don't make sense.


    The literal dozens of local dairy farms with calves in the pasture alongside their mothers says, "you have no clue what you're talking about."

    Never said all dairy farms. Mainly just the ones making all the money.

    The ones not making money generally get out of the business pretty quick.
  • French_Peasant
    French_Peasant Posts: 1,639 Member
    Sometimes I feel bad for livestock. Then I remember the video of those baboons just riping an antelopes leg out while it still lives and I think that what we're doing with livestock isn't half bad.

    Or the nature programs of chimpanzees catching baby monkeys. :(
  • Jruzer
    Jruzer Posts: 3,501 Member
    If we're arguing about whether something is "good" or "bad", this is a question proper to philosophy and religion. Here is some relevant text from one of the oldest written documents addressing this issue:
    Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.
  • BillMcKay1
    BillMcKay1 Posts: 315 Member
    BillMcKay1 wrote: »
    You have to ask yourself why so many millions of people are lactose intolerant. Some people just simply adapt to digesting the sugar enzymes contained in milk out of survival. Others don't. I wonder about things like this... like if something is giving you heart burn would you just take a pill and continue to eat the item? Personally I feel like that's my body telling me to stop. So many people forgot to listen to their bodies thought it's just sad. A lot of people actually let a computer program and application developers tell them when they should eat instead of trying to figure out if their actually hungry or not :smile:

    Rather than asking *myself* why millions of people are lactose intolerant, I asked science, specifically genetics. Interestingly, your musings here aren't entirely incorrect, but more along the line of the hazy explanation my 7 year old would provide when asked about the unique preponderance of lactose tolerance among British, Scandinavian, and other northern European populations ("simply adapt...out of survival"), how it helped them survive a harsh climate and genetically out-compete individuals with less-suitable genetic adaptations ("Others don't."), and the subsequent dispersal of the genome across at least seven millennia, while still leaving "so many millions [who are] lactose intolerant" (aka, two-thirds of the world population). You might find the following to be helpful:

    http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471

    And yes, anyone who has dysentary-esque explosions from their posterior should probably listen to their body and stop drinking milk. It leaves more for those of us with Viking-Celt-Teutonic ancestry and a 90% tolerance rate.

    On the question of calves being separated immediately from their mothers, it is actually less stressful for both the cow and calf if the separation happens immediately. The cow rapidly forgets, and the calf doesn't know any different, as opposed to weaning after a month or two, where the stress and grief can last for days for both parties. I am an occasional visitor to both a conventional dairy farm (where the cows enjoy a particularly cushy life, including self-selecting milking, deep sand beds, automated manure clean-up, and fans, massage and misting machines), and a 100% grass-fed raw-milk operation where the cows greatly enjoy being on pasture for most of the year. It doesn't stop most from becoming hamburger at some point in their lives, but we all eventually become hamburger anyway, even the apex predators.

    Sorry about my "fuzzy" science. Please see my last post above for the actual science.

    Less stressful for the calf and the mother? Really? How about let's make it not stressful by not practicing it at all.

    Well, if we don't need the milk or the meat, Why would anyone even bother to feed and raise cows? Taken to the ultimate goal you are advocating for the gradual extinction of the entire species. Seems pretty harsh.

    Uhm, I don't know. I'm pretty sure cows and calfs just happened long before any human intervention.
    This reminds me of the hunters who say they have to kill the deer because we're over-run with them LOL!

    Yes because the dairy cows of today are just like the they were 10,000 years ago. Where would they live? Why would farmers let cows they could neither milk or cull for meat just wander on their land?

    Oh and the town I grew up on with family run dairies that treated their cows very well were pretty well off. You could always pick out the Dutch dairy farmers kid. They drove the nicest cars at school.
  • BoxerBrawler
    BoxerBrawler Posts: 2,032 Member
    ndj1979 wrote: »
    ndj1979 wrote: »
    TR0berts wrote: »
    rankinsect wrote: »
    salembambi wrote: »
    bad for you

    & especially for the calf and mother cows

    Those cows would be in a lot of pain if they were unmilked. Dairy cows are upset with you if you fail to milk them on schedule.

    Totally wrong.
    Cows are forcefully inseminated and the moment they give birth the baby calf is ripped away before it can even walk or open it's eyes. The babies are put into cages (some) for veal and the mother cows are milked, for their milk. The entire process is painful and unethical. But yeah... keep listening to the multi-billion dollar dairy industry when they tell you milk does a body good.

    Oh, and momma cows are also upset when their babies are taken away from them.

    The words Ethical farming and slaughter just don't make sense.


    The literal dozens of local dairy farms with calves in the pasture alongside their mothers says, "you have no clue what you're talking about."

    Never said all dairy farms. Mainly just the ones making all the money.

    Why is making money off cows a bad thing?

    Because they are living beings, not things.

    that is ridiculous...

    so then no one should farm, own a butcher shop, or any other food processing plant? What do you propose all these people do for a living?

    Hell, using her metric, I'd take it a step further. All business models that make a profit off of the labor of others are bad. So pretty much all of them.

    Hey thanks for calling my simple opinion "ridiculous", that's real nice.
    I really don't care what anyone does for a living and I'm certainly not proposing anything. Nor do I state my opinion as a "Metric". Really? do you work in a corporate office? Is that this weeks buzz-word?
  • BoxerBrawler
    BoxerBrawler Posts: 2,032 Member
    Jruzer wrote: »
    If we're arguing about whether something is "good" or "bad", this is a question proper to philosophy and religion. Here is some relevant text from one of the oldest written documents addressing this issue:
    Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.

    Well that just about does it then.
    We've now covered ethics, politics, religion and racism.
    Did we leave anything out?
    I hope the OP has found this useful :smile:
  • auddii
    auddii Posts: 15,357 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    BillMcKay1 wrote: »
    You have to ask yourself why so many millions of people are lactose intolerant. Some people just simply adapt to digesting the sugar enzymes contained in milk out of survival. Others don't. I wonder about things like this... like if something is giving you heart burn would you just take a pill and continue to eat the item? Personally I feel like that's my body telling me to stop. So many people forgot to listen to their bodies thought it's just sad. A lot of people actually let a computer program and application developers tell them when they should eat instead of trying to figure out if their actually hungry or not :smile:

    Rather than asking *myself* why millions of people are lactose intolerant, I asked science, specifically genetics. Interestingly, your musings here aren't entirely incorrect, but more along the line of the hazy explanation my 7 year old would provide when asked about the unique preponderance of lactose tolerance among British, Scandinavian, and other northern European populations ("simply adapt...out of survival"), how it helped them survive a harsh climate and genetically out-compete individuals with less-suitable genetic adaptations ("Others don't."), and the subsequent dispersal of the genome across at least seven millennia, while still leaving "so many millions [who are] lactose intolerant" (aka, two-thirds of the world population). You might find the following to be helpful:

    http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471

    And yes, anyone who has dysentary-esque explosions from their posterior should probably listen to their body and stop drinking milk. It leaves more for those of us with Viking-Celt-Teutonic ancestry and a 90% tolerance rate.

    On the question of calves being separated immediately from their mothers, it is actually less stressful for both the cow and calf if the separation happens immediately. The cow rapidly forgets, and the calf doesn't know any different, as opposed to weaning after a month or two, where the stress and grief can last for days for both parties. I am an occasional visitor to both a conventional dairy farm (where the cows enjoy a particularly cushy life, including self-selecting milking, deep sand beds, automated manure clean-up, and fans, massage and misting machines), and a 100% grass-fed raw-milk operation where the cows greatly enjoy being on pasture for most of the year. It doesn't stop most from becoming hamburger at some point in their lives, but we all eventually become hamburger anyway, even the apex predators.

    Sorry about my "fuzzy" science. Please see my last post above for the actual science.

    Less stressful for the calf and the mother? Really? How about let's make it not stressful by not practicing it at all.

    Well, if we don't need the milk or the meat, Why would anyone even bother to feed and raise cows? Taken to the ultimate goal you are advocating for the gradual extinction of the entire species. Seems pretty harsh.

    Uhm, I don't know. I'm pretty sure cows and calfs just happened long before any human intervention.
    This reminds me of the hunters who say they have to kill the deer because we're over-run with them LOL!

    I've never heard the argument that we need to shoot deer because we're overrun with them but I can tell you that the management of deer populations by/for hunting has exponentially improved the health and quality of said deer populations.
    Without herd management via hunting, deer populations would fluctuate greatly due to increased populations leading to the spread of fatal diseases like Blue Tongue which decimate densely populated deer populations. Then when populations finally recover, the die off again.
    Hunting effectively stops that cycle.

    Herd management is a man-made idea.
    Anyone who hunts has many valid arguments why it's justifiable.
    Anyone who doesn't believe in hunting can come up with a million reasons why it's wrong.
    To each their own. Personally I don't feel as if hunting is a fair sport, nor is it necessary by any stretch of the imagination. But that's just my opinion.

    I have no clue what this has to do with dairy, but this really put herd management in perspective for me:
    http://www.radiolab.org/story/rhino-hunter/
  • BoxerBrawler
    BoxerBrawler Posts: 2,032 Member
    RLester67 wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    BillMcKay1 wrote: »
    You have to ask yourself why so many millions of people are lactose intolerant. Some people just simply adapt to digesting the sugar enzymes contained in milk out of survival. Others don't. I wonder about things like this... like if something is giving you heart burn would you just take a pill and continue to eat the item? Personally I feel like that's my body telling me to stop. So many people forgot to listen to their bodies thought it's just sad. A lot of people actually let a computer program and application developers tell them when they should eat instead of trying to figure out if their actually hungry or not :smile:

    Rather than asking *myself* why millions of people are lactose intolerant, I asked science, specifically genetics. Interestingly, your musings here aren't entirely incorrect, but more along the line of the hazy explanation my 7 year old would provide when asked about the unique preponderance of lactose tolerance among British, Scandinavian, and other northern European populations ("simply adapt...out of survival"), how it helped them survive a harsh climate and genetically out-compete individuals with less-suitable genetic adaptations ("Others don't."), and the subsequent dispersal of the genome across at least seven millennia, while still leaving "so many millions [who are] lactose intolerant" (aka, two-thirds of the world population). You might find the following to be helpful:

    http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471

    And yes, anyone who has dysentary-esque explosions from their posterior should probably listen to their body and stop drinking milk. It leaves more for those of us with Viking-Celt-Teutonic ancestry and a 90% tolerance rate.

    On the question of calves being separated immediately from their mothers, it is actually less stressful for both the cow and calf if the separation happens immediately. The cow rapidly forgets, and the calf doesn't know any different, as opposed to weaning after a month or two, where the stress and grief can last for days for both parties. I am an occasional visitor to both a conventional dairy farm (where the cows enjoy a particularly cushy life, including self-selecting milking, deep sand beds, automated manure clean-up, and fans, massage and misting machines), and a 100% grass-fed raw-milk operation where the cows greatly enjoy being on pasture for most of the year. It doesn't stop most from becoming hamburger at some point in their lives, but we all eventually become hamburger anyway, even the apex predators.

    Sorry about my "fuzzy" science. Please see my last post above for the actual science.

    Less stressful for the calf and the mother? Really? How about let's make it not stressful by not practicing it at all.

    Well, if we don't need the milk or the meat, Why would anyone even bother to feed and raise cows? Taken to the ultimate goal you are advocating for the gradual extinction of the entire species. Seems pretty harsh.

    Uhm, I don't know. I'm pretty sure cows and calfs just happened long before any human intervention.
    This reminds me of the hunters who say they have to kill the deer because we're over-run with them LOL!

    I've never heard the argument that we need to shoot deer because we're overrun with them but I can tell you that the management of deer populations by/for hunting has exponentially improved the health and quality of said deer populations.
    Without herd management via hunting, deer populations would fluctuate greatly due to increased populations leading to the spread of fatal diseases like Blue Tongue which decimate densely populated deer populations. Then when populations finally recover, the die off again.
    Hunting effectively stops that cycle.

    Herd management is a man-made idea.

    Herd management is simply mimicking the natural predator / prey balance found in nature, where humans are the apex predators.

    Veganism and anthropomorphism? Now those are man made ideas.

    I can buy that. I think a big problem with that is finding the balance of managing and over-managing... similar to over-fishing, depleting species of fish and having to resort to fish farming. Do you know what I mean?

    In terms of Veganism, I think yeah a lot of the "trendy" stuff is a man made idea but a lot of it isn't... a lot of it has to do with how ones body feels and performs eating that kind of diet vs. meat. I am not a Vegan by the way nor do I label myself.

    It's all about balance I guess :smile:

    ... and thanks for the intelligent conversation and not resorting to name-calling and insults. It's nice to converse with someone here who actually knows how to speak (type), AND hear at the same time. A good human quality indeed!
  • vingogly
    vingogly Posts: 1,785 Member
    Oh the scary dihydrogen monoxide is a chemical too

    Many people are killed by this chemical every year.
  • vingogly
    vingogly Posts: 1,785 Member
    This report combines the findings of over 400 scientific papers from reputable peer-reviewed journals such as the British Medical Journal and the Lancet. The research is clear – the consumption of cow’s milk and dairy products is linked to the development of teenage acne, allergies, arthritis, some cancers, colic, constipation, coronary heart disease, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, dementia, ear infection, food poisoning, gallstones, kidney disease, migraine, autoimmune conditions, including multiple sclerosis, overweight, obesity and osteoporosis

    http://www.whitelies.org.uk/sites/default/files/milkmyths/White Lies report 2014.pdf

    Everyone should be aware that the China study isn't without controversy. See for example:

    http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/China-Study.html
    https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-china-study-revisited/
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,139 Member
    ndj1979 wrote: »
    ndj1979 wrote: »
    TR0berts wrote: »
    rankinsect wrote: »
    salembambi wrote: »
    bad for you

    & especially for the calf and mother cows

    Those cows would be in a lot of pain if they were unmilked. Dairy cows are upset with you if you fail to milk them on schedule.

    Totally wrong.
    Cows are forcefully inseminated and the moment they give birth the baby calf is ripped away before it can even walk or open it's eyes. The babies are put into cages (some) for veal and the mother cows are milked, for their milk. The entire process is painful and unethical. But yeah... keep listening to the multi-billion dollar dairy industry when they tell you milk does a body good.

    Oh, and momma cows are also upset when their babies are taken away from them.

    The words Ethical farming and slaughter just don't make sense.


    The literal dozens of local dairy farms with calves in the pasture alongside their mothers says, "you have no clue what you're talking about."

    Never said all dairy farms. Mainly just the ones making all the money.

    Why is making money off cows a bad thing?

    Because they are living beings, not things.

    that is ridiculous...

    so then no one should farm, own a butcher shop, or any other food processing plant? What do you propose all these people do for a living?

    Hell, using her metric, I'd take it a step further. All business models that make a profit off of the labor of others are bad. So pretty much all of them.

    Hey thanks for calling my simple opinion "ridiculous", that's real nice.
    I really don't care what anyone does for a living and I'm certainly not proposing anything. Nor do I state my opinion as a "Metric". Really? do you work in a corporate office? Is that this weeks buzz-word?

    it is ridiculous because your are basically saying that all farmers, butchers, etc should be put of work, because cows are living things. Following this logic, no CEO should be in business because they are directing other living things.

  • Gallowmere1984
    Gallowmere1984 Posts: 6,626 Member
    edited August 2016
    ndj1979 wrote: »
    ndj1979 wrote: »
    TR0berts wrote: »
    rankinsect wrote: »
    salembambi wrote: »
    bad for you

    & especially for the calf and mother cows

    Those cows would be in a lot of pain if they were unmilked. Dairy cows are upset with you if you fail to milk them on schedule.

    Totally wrong.
    Cows are forcefully inseminated and the moment they give birth the baby calf is ripped away before it can even walk or open it's eyes. The babies are put into cages (some) for veal and the mother cows are milked, for their milk. The entire process is painful and unethical. But yeah... keep listening to the multi-billion dollar dairy industry when they tell you milk does a body good.

    Oh, and momma cows are also upset when their babies are taken away from them.

    The words Ethical farming and slaughter just don't make sense.


    The literal dozens of local dairy farms with calves in the pasture alongside their mothers says, "you have no clue what you're talking about."

    Never said all dairy farms. Mainly just the ones making all the money.

    Why is making money off cows a bad thing?

    Because they are living beings, not things.

    that is ridiculous...

    so then no one should farm, own a butcher shop, or any other food processing plant? What do you propose all these people do for a living?

    Hell, using her metric, I'd take it a step further. All business models that make a profit off of the labor of others are bad. So pretty much all of them.

    Hey thanks for calling my simple opinion "ridiculous", that's real nice.
    I really don't care what anyone does for a living and I'm certainly not proposing anything. Nor do I state my opinion as a "Metric". Really? do you work in a corporate office? Is that this weeks buzz-word?

    Nope. I work in an asphalt lab; just being your average, run of the mill peon. I also don't recall using the word ridiculous, though you did.