10 essential questions to ask, to know whether products from small dairy farms are ethical
And eggs from backyard chickens!
This is how cows and calves are treated in the dairy industry:
If you are against large-scale industrial farming but believe that consuming dairy products from small-scale local/backyard farms is ethical or humane, please answer the following questions:
1. Where does the small farm that you support source their animals?
If they source their animals from large-scale industrial farms, then you're indirectly contributing to something you say you're opposed to.
It might be that the vast majority of animals on the small farm were bred on the farm, but my question is, where did they get their first animals? (Though your contribution to the industrial farm might be very small in this case, it is not zero.)
2. What is the sex ratio of the animals on the small dairy farm?
The answer is almost definitely that females would outnumber the males by a huge margin (if there are males at all), since females are the only ones who can lactate. So where are all the brothers of these animals?
Animals, when they are born, are 50% male and 50% female. A dairy farm requires the killing of males at the source (the farm where the animals were originally bred) - usually when they are newborns, since it is not profitable to feed them. Keeping males alive for even a short time is a waste of money, since those males won't produce any value (unless they are sold for veal, in which case they are tortured for months before slaughter; or shipped abroad without food or water to be slaughtered for low-quality meat products). Inefficient farms aren't profitable, can't compete with more efficient ones, and therefore go out of business.
If the small farm purchased just one female from the large industrial farm, and then built up their herd by breeding that one female, it still means that you're likely contributing to the killing of at least one of her brothers at the farm where she was bred.
3. How do the animals at the small dairy farm become pregnant?
Are they artificially inseminated? Look up the process of artificial insemination. As the video points out, this is painful and traumatic for the cows. According to the documentary Maa ka Doodh (Mother’s Milk), in India, artificial insemination is usually done by untrained or badly trained people which results in a high proportion of cows subjected to it having their uteruses torn and dying of infection.
Cows are restrained on something that the industry calls a "rape rack", because they know what the process truly is. How can the products of rape ever be ethical? Why should non-human females not have the right to bodily autonomy like human females? Even if the process was made as easy and painless as possible and performed by well-trained vets, can rape ever be justified? Is the problem with rape the pain experienced by the female animal/woman or the violation of her bodily autonomy?
If the small dairy farm keeps a few males around for the process of "natural insemination", is that much better? In the wild, a female can fight back or run away if she does not want to mate. A domesticated female has no choice but to submit, as she is confined in an area with the male. Why should non-human females not have the choice whether to mate, get pregnant or give birth like human females?
"What kind of animal rapes just for milk?", from the mockumentary Carnage
4. How often are the animals made to give birth?
Every year? Are they constantly producing milk for the needs of the farmer, their family, friends and customers? Do they "rotate" the animals so that only a few are pregnant at one time, so that the others can "have a break" from reproductive labour?
Does it matter whether they are constantly pregnant or whether they get a break? Would it matter if this was being done to human females? Would it be OK to do this to human surrogate mothers and wetnurses even once? Why it it OK to do this to non-human females but not to human females? Why should human females have "rights" but non-human females are only expected to have "welfare standards" (which aren't even respected 99% of the time)?
4. How do small farms maintain the small size of their herds when at least one of their animals is giving birth every one or two years?
All animals, including humans, produce milk only when they've had a baby. Since milk is the product, the baby is a byproduct of the dairy industry.
The very fact that a small dairy farm remains small year after year is not a point in their favour, but should raise red flags: what is happening to the babies, particularly the males who will not produce milk and only cost money to feed? Are they being sent to the local slaughterhouse? If they're not culling their animals, a small dairy herd will eventually turn into a medium-sized or large herd. A small farm can only remain small by having some of the animals who must be bred for dairy production sent away (where?) or killed.
I want to reiterate this, because this is an absolutely essential question to ask: What happens to the byproducts of the dairy you consume? Should babies be considered byproducts or waste products, whether human or non-human?
Is it ethical to continue consuming dairy products without asking this question? Was that milk made for you or for that baby? If it wouldn’t be justifiable to drink another woman’s breastmilk (that nature made for her infant), then why is it OK to drink a non-human female’s breastmilk (that nature made for her infant)?
5. Have the animals been selectively bred to produce more milk than their natural - wild - counterparts?
If so (like in the case of Jersey cows), they are likely to suffer from diseases like mastitis and pain from the weight of their udders, as well as calcium/mineral depletion as their milk is drained from them regularly for years. This leads to eventual collapse, as their bones can't hold them up any more. The industry calls these animals "downers", and drags and prods the crippled animals to the slaughterhouse (flinging them into trucks with heavy machinery), further injuring them and breaking their limbs in the process. Which leads me to the next question:
6. What does the small farm that you support do with the animals who cannot produce milk any more?
Cows for example are only good for five or six cycles of impregnation, until their capacity for lactation starts to wane. Does the small farm keep old, "spent" animals around and feed them at their own expense? Or are they sent to the local slaughterhouse?
Local family-owned small-scale slaughterhouses bill themselves as more “humane” than large ones too. But this video shows the reality. Humane means “kind” and “compassionate”. Humane slaughter is an oxymoron. It is not kind, compassionate or humane to kill someone.
7. How do you know that the animals are really happy and treated with the highest of welfare standards at all times?
How can you be sure that a farm worker isn’t abusing the animals, as we see in many small-scale and local farms? The documentary Maa ka Doodh refers to a case where a day-old calf was raped by a dairy worker. (Most dairy farms in India are small-scale operations.) Animal abuse – over and above the routine, legal, industry standard abuse I’ve described – sadism, cruelty and torture are very common in both small and large-scale farms. In both cases, animals are treated as property and commodities with no fundamental rights, which allows abuse with impunity. There are no laws protecting farmed animals; they are exempt from animal cruelty laws that apply to pets, and even the inadequate welfare standards are regularly flouted and almost never enforced, leading to a culture of impunity.
Unless you raise the animal yourself, you don’t know for sure if they are truly happy and treated well (even by welfare standards) at all times. Most of us have pets, and would never dream of impregnating them to take their milk. Yet we see no problem with doing it to other species like goats, cows and buffaloes, who are morally no different to our dogs and cats. We should at least apply the same standards to farmed animals as we do to our pets, and then we would see that exploitation and slaughter are wrong, no matter how humane-washed they present it as.
8. How can you justify breeding animals when there are tens of billions of animals in need of rescue?
Of course, pet ownership can be highly exploitative, especially when we buy them from breeders rather than rescuing an animal who needs a home. That is another reason why farming is fundamentally wrong, even with the highest of welfare standards – it is wrong to bring more animals into the world when there are tens of billions of animals who need to be rescued from animal agriculture/slavery.
It is wrong to buy a pedigree dog or cat from a breeder and wrong to breed them yourself for more “beautiful”, “high-status”, “trophy”, “salable” dogs and cats while ignoring the strays who are no different from them, in terms of sentience and personality. It is wrong to take in a stray cat or dog, not spay or neuter them, and allow them to breed so that many more animals are born into the world that you can’t take care of. It’s wrong because there are already too many who need a home. So breeding of animals can never be justified, in any context. The only animal “farms” that can be justified are sanctuaries that take care of rescued animals with the primary and only goal being the welfare of the animals, unlike dairy farms where the primary goal is to exploit them to take a product that humans can consume. It is unethical to breed and exploit animals at all, no matter how kindly you do it.
And finally, the most important question:
10. How would you feel if it was done to you?
The moral paradigm to know whether something is ethical, humane or justifiable is, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you". If you believe that supporting "small-scale farms" with "happy animals" who are treated with "high welfare standards" and "milked with love" and "not separated from their babies" is ethical, then surely you wouldn't mind that being done to you, or to other human females.
In fact, this is exactly the same kind of welfarism and ethics-washing propaganda that the surrogacy industry uses to justify reproductive exploitation and enslavement of poor women. The idea of "happy animals" is as much of a scam as "altruistic surrogacy" (or "empowered sex workers"). In reality, these women, their children, the female animals and their children endure torturous conditions, repeated violations of their rights, and lifelong trauma. The only way to continue to justify (while claiming to care about animal welfare) it is to wilfully ignore the reality and refuse to think critically about it. But even if women and animals were happy, even if the surrogacy companies and the small farms were the idyllic places they say they are, that still wouldn't excuse the fundamental violation of their rights at any stage of the process. Exploitation is wrong, no matter how well the exploited are treated.
Non-human animals are "others"! Not seeing them as others worthy of moral consideration is due to human supremacy, which we are indoctrinated into from birth. Small children do see animals as others worthy of moral consideration; they see them as friends and children just like them. They recognise their obvious sentience and they empathise with them – the fact that they cry out in pain when they’re hurt, that they show fear in the same way as us, by trembling and shaking, that they express happiness in the same way as us, that they express love and bond with each other, that they communicate in different ways – they recognise our sentience and feel empathy for others – they have social structures, they have intelligence and different abilities...
You have to be taught and trained to ignore the obvious sentience, consciousness, subjectivity, individuality, and personality of non-human farmed animals. The constant violence – and products of that violence – that we see around us desensitises us to their suffering, as well as the lessons we are taught at home, in school and more broadly in society. The only way we can be comfortable in a society which exploits and slaughters animals in the way that it does is to convince ourselves that animals aren’t really sentient, that there’s some fundamental difference between humans and non-humans that makes it OK to do what we do to them. It takes a great deal of cognitive dissonance to maintain this myth, as well as to draw speciesist distinction between pets and farmed animals.)
I hope that you ask these questions, and come to the same conclusion that I did, which is that:
The only ethical dairy farm is a closed one.
The same questions apply to backyard chickens. They are sourced from the same hatcheries which kill the males:
My neighbour recently started keeping backyard chickens for their eggs. I asked him about the sex ratio and he said there were ten females and two males. He couldn't tell me what happened to the other eight males.
Egg-laying hens are selectively bred to produce more than 300 eggs a year, while their wild counterparts produce around a dozen. Egg-laying is a painful process of menstruation, far more painful than human menstruation. The constant production of eggs depletes the minerals in the chicken's body, leading to deficiencies and fragile bones. Sanctuaries that care for rescued chickens will feed the eggs back to them so that they can replenish the minerals in their body and stay healthy. Due to these facts, taking a chicken's egg can never be considered ethical or humane.
If you doubt the sentience and intelligence of chickens, read this:
“How Science Can Drive Ethics
While some scientific researchers appear reluctant to extrapolate the ethical implications of their work in chicken behavior, many of them now identify how routine chicken farming practices present serious ethical problems. From the hatching stage through the raising and slaughtering of chickens, the science presented here confirms that chickens exploited for meat and eggs endure a staggering degree of physical and psychological suffering.
Neuroscientist Lesley Rogers, author of Development of the Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken, argues that we are compelled to understand the cognitive abilities of chickens above all other birds because they are the most exploited and least respected avian species. Even Vallortigara, who claims to see no ethical implications from his discoveries, nonetheless makes a clear ethical judgment when he says, “I would urge people to treat chickens with respect even if they were not intelligent as they are.”
Moreover, the exploitation of some 40 billion chickens every year when we have no biological requirement for animal flesh is morally indefensible. When we can easily make choices that do not harm these animals, then we should, as Karen Davis so eloquently articulates in her article, Eliminating the Suffering of Chickens Bred for Meat.
Ethical Impacts of Chicken Behavior Research
Much of the research on chicken behavior and biology is motivated by the poultry industry’s objective to more efficiently exploit chickens as a resource. As author Annie Potts points out in her book Chicken, “It is no coincidence that the first creature to have a full genome map was the chicken: Gallus is the most studied species in the world. Every biological feature was experimented on with the aim of rendering chickens more serviceable to humans.”
Free from Harm opposes animal breeding and exploitation (which includes animal testing), and we recognize that even observational studies, conducted in as natural an environment as possible to encourage natural behavior, present their own ethical problems. Aside from these ethical challenges, observational studies of chicken behavior that are intended to benefit the species, rather than the industry that exploits them, may have great value in changing society’s attitudes toward chickens. The birds in such studies are spared lives as agricultural commodities. And some researchers work to rehome animals to sanctuaries or to private individuals who will care for them as companions.
Chicken Behavior Beyond Science
While science provides important empirical validation to our understanding of chicken behavior, anyone with an inquisitive mind and an interest in chickens can learn a great deal about them just by observing and interacting with them. In a short time, their individual personalities and rich life experiences are revealed.
Free from Harm has documented each of its chicken rescues, using photos, videos and stories to provide an intimate portrayal of each chicken we’ve had the pleasure of getting to know. Karen Davis has also offered a very compelling chronicle of her years of experience with the rescued birds on her sanctuary in her essay, The Social Lives of Chickens. A future article will focus on learning about chicken behavior through sanctuaries.”
Chicken Behavior: An Overview of Recent Science, Free From Harm