thoughts on dairy (or: goodbye, cheese!)
My feminism, upbringing, and food choices came to a head about a month ago. See, despite having given up milk and ice cream years ago, I still indulged in cheese from time to time. I blamed my ethnic roots--Greek AND Italian? How could I give up feta and the motz? I blamed that kind of taste and round, fullness in the mouth that only really happens with cheese and maybe--if done correctly--mushrooms. I even kidded myself into believing that dairy cows don't suffer nearly as much as beef cattle. Boy was I wrong on that last part.
Imagine never seeing the light of day or walking on soft ground. Imagine being constantly forced into pregnancy, only to see your children ripped from you at birth. If you give birth to a girl, she'll lead the same miserable life as you. If male, he'll be tethered to a crate, unable to turn around, then consumed for his tender flesh. (Yes, you cannot have the veal industry without the dairy industry, I discovered.) Milk constantly squeezed from your body, you suffer calcium deficiency because it is leaving your body faster than you can replace it. You get mastitis, a bacterial infection in your udders. You are dead by three. Your spent and wasted body is sold for food, but only after it's ground up and dyed red to mask its flaws.
If the above happened to a human, we'd call it rape, slavery, child slavery and child abuse. But if you do all of the above to animal, we call it cheese, milk, ice cream. We use the body and life-fluids of sentient being to make food we don't even need. No other mammal consumes milk past infancy but humans. To wit, no other mammal consumes the milk of ANOTHER mammal but us. We subject living creatures to untenable conditions and horrific physical and emotional abuse (don't tell me a mother cow doesn't cry for her child--she most certainly does) because it's hot and ice cream tastes good on hot days. Because I'm XYZ and this is the food of my culture. Because what else am I going to put on my cereal. It's decadent and it's disgusting.
So I quit. I stopped eating cheese and I stopped condoning these practices with my purchasing power. As a woman, I could no longer subject another female creature to the stuff of my nightmares simply because she is not the same species as me. An animal not allowed to live a life according to its nature is an animal tortured and enslaved for no other reason than it had the misfortune to be born non-human. I can't do it. I just can't.
For more on the subject of dairy, I direct you to Farm Sanctuary, a decidedly un-PETA organization (I friggin' hate PETA, but that a post for another day)... http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/dairy/
Imagine never seeing the light of day or walking on soft ground. Imagine being constantly forced into pregnancy, only to see your children ripped from you at birth. If you give birth to a girl, she'll lead the same miserable life as you. If male, he'll be tethered to a crate, unable to turn around, then consumed for his tender flesh. (Yes, you cannot have the veal industry without the dairy industry, I discovered.) Milk constantly squeezed from your body, you suffer calcium deficiency because it is leaving your body faster than you can replace it. You get mastitis, a bacterial infection in your udders. You are dead by three. Your spent and wasted body is sold for food, but only after it's ground up and dyed red to mask its flaws.
If the above happened to a human, we'd call it rape, slavery, child slavery and child abuse. But if you do all of the above to animal, we call it cheese, milk, ice cream. We use the body and life-fluids of sentient being to make food we don't even need. No other mammal consumes milk past infancy but humans. To wit, no other mammal consumes the milk of ANOTHER mammal but us. We subject living creatures to untenable conditions and horrific physical and emotional abuse (don't tell me a mother cow doesn't cry for her child--she most certainly does) because it's hot and ice cream tastes good on hot days. Because I'm XYZ and this is the food of my culture. Because what else am I going to put on my cereal. It's decadent and it's disgusting.
So I quit. I stopped eating cheese and I stopped condoning these practices with my purchasing power. As a woman, I could no longer subject another female creature to the stuff of my nightmares simply because she is not the same species as me. An animal not allowed to live a life according to its nature is an animal tortured and enslaved for no other reason than it had the misfortune to be born non-human. I can't do it. I just can't.
For more on the subject of dairy, I direct you to Farm Sanctuary, a decidedly un-PETA organization (I friggin' hate PETA, but that a post for another day)... http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/dairy/