How do vegetarians justify drinking milk?

Question

When the dairy industry has such close connections to the veal industry?

Cows have to be calved on a regular basis in order for cows to continue to produce milk. Those calves are then killed to produce veal.

So why is drinking milk any different from eating meat?

Answer 1

'tis a good question.

by definition, veggies don't eat meat, fish, poultry or slaughter by-products. So, milk drinkers can call them selves veggies. Whether the defintion needs changing is another matter.

The veal industry in now largly gone in many coutries. I live in the farming community in the UK and its true that half of the calves born to milk producing cows are killed within the first week of birth. Just go to any dairy farm and you can see them in pens waiting for the bullet.

Knowing that cows are fed hormone enhanced food, kept pregnant too often to be natural, bribe fed food depending on thier milk yield, are expected to produce 60 lites a day ( where the natural is 10 lites ) and are killed age 8 ( rather than the natural 15 years ) I do find it a bit odd that veggies drink milk.

i see it all at our local dairy carousel...its just a milk factory.

if you drink milk, you are payng for death, torture, pain and cruelty. If you're happy with that, carry on, i'm not here to change your mind. But be honest with yourselves and admit this is what you pay for.

nneave is wrong. Dairy cows are just not suitable for beef. Dairy cows simply do not have enough body muscle on them.

Ashley ( below ) I live in the middle of the dairy community, i see hundreds of bull calves penned up and the gunman comes in once a week to dispatch them..Its not a lie, i see it with my own eyes. Afactory farm would not put up with the blood-mess of slitting throats.

Answer 2

I agree with you here.

I became a vegetarian at 7 but continued to eat eggs and honey and drink milk till I was 16.Then I learned about the amount of cruelty involved in the production of these 3 things and so I turned vegan.

So all the vegetarians who said nothing suffers or dies because of the dairy industry-do a LOT more research!

Answer 3

I don't drink milk...yucky! I haven't had milk for well over 20 yrs. I can't help but thinking that that is something made for a calf by its mother. Not to mention all that a poor milk cow has to go through. Also, the fact that there is blood and pus in the milk, from infected udders....
It's kinda like.... well, what if as a child your mom couldn't breast feed you because she was giving the breast milk made for you to the neighbors cat or something... It's just not right, and it's not how nature intended it...

Answer 4

Because they don't have to support it morally if they see nothing wrong with killing cows. Cows are no longer like any other animal on earth, they have been bred and bred until the traits that humans want in them are so pronounced that they are a completely new creature not seen anywhere in nature. They are a human construct and it is not immoral to destroy what one has created.

Actually there are only two ways to view morallity, it's either objective or subjective. Objective reality is called religion, most religions (christianity, islam, judaism, catholocism, etc.) not only allow the eating of cow, but specifically mention that they are good to be eaten. There are, to my knowledge, only two religious groups that prohibit eating beef, the Dharmic religions like hinduism (and in many of those it's a suggestion, not a law,) Taoism, and Zoroastrianism. I know there are some christian sub-sets that suggest a vegetarian lifestyle, like seventh day adventists, but I know of no other religions that proclude it completely.

The only other choice is subjective morallity, or personal morallity, which says that what I find moral may or may not be moral for you. In other words, since they are not doing any harm to any other PERSON they are MORALLY justified in doing whatever they want to do, and that you would be morally wrong to deny them anything that they want, including milk.

Answer 5

As evidenced by other "answers" to your question, a lot of people don't make the connection of milk to veal. People narrow their gaze to see only that the actual dairy cow isn't being killed when milk is taken. Unlike you, they don't realize that cows don't just make milk, that a calf has to be created. The calf is the life that's slaughtered in order to provide dairy.

So, drinking milk isn't really all that different from eating meat, if you're a vegetarian for ethical reasons. If you're in it for the health, then organic dairy is free of a lot of he gunk in non-organic dairy.

Answer 6

cows will continue to produce milk as long as they are being milked. they are given hormones to produce more. they aren't all calved. and if all calves were made into veal, there would be no more cows

When I was growing up my uncle had a cow which produce 6 gallons a day (no hormones). I thought it was gross because all we did was remove the fat which floated to the top, refrigerated the milk and drank it without being pastuerized. Itwas like drinking heavy cream.

Answer 7

I'm not a vegatarian, but I don't eat meat, (I do eat fish), and I must agree I have trouble with milk. I feel guilty when I drink it because I know how much the cows suffer having to constantly breed and then having their babies taken away. They also have very sore, ulcerated udders and are kept in cramped conditions. Also, their udders sometimes become so big that their legs begin to buckle.

I admit I am a bit of a hypercrit not eating meat and still drinking milk and I can't really justify it. I do try and get organic milk as I imagine it can't be as bad for the cows.

Answer 8

Not all vegetarians drink milk. Only lacto and ovo-lacto vegetarians do so. Ovo-vegetarians and vegans do not. Also, not all vegetarians become vegetarian because they do not wish to harm animals. Some do so for their faith. Some do so for cultural reasons. Some do so for health reasons. Some do so for environmental reasons. Some simply do not like the taste of meat. There are a whole range of reasons.

Answer 9

Its vegans who won't have anything that came from an animal. Vegetarians won't eat anything thats to do with meat. They still eat cheese and eggs and have milk beacuse an animal isn't killed for it. A veal farm and a milk farm are totally different. Check your facts first

Answer 10

there is no veal production in uk as it is not finacially vibie.50% + of dairy cows are breed to beef bulls to produce high quality beef .sexed semen is used to produce female only calves as dairy repacements so the uk has no call to kill calves for veal