Pain on Your Plate
Part VIII -- Cows on Factory Farms
A cow in a milking machine.

The average lifespan of a cow is 25 years. But "dairy" cows seldom live past their fourth birthday due to the stress of the modern dairy factory where they are kept continually pregnant and their babies are stolen from them shortly after birth.
Cows crowded together on a factory-farm.

Normally a very placid animal, cows on the factory farm must be given tranquilizers because the regime of the modern dairy makes them so tense and hyperactive. They are also injected with hormones to promote milk production. And their teats are dipped in chemicals to reduce inflammation. You drink all of this in with your glass of milk, and increase your chances of cancer thereby.
Calves, chained by the neck in small stalls.

The milk you drink was originally intended to be passed from a mother to her baby. When you drink milk or eat cheese you are stealing milk out of the mouth of a baby, and interfering with the natural relationship between a mother and her baby.

Cows have a very strong maternal instinct and have been known to break down stalls in an effort to get to their babies.
A calf, imprisoned in a tightly cramped stall.

What makes it worse is what happens to those babies once they've been separated from their mothers (so that we can drink the milk intended for them.)
A caged calf attempting to nurse on human fingers,

This calf was taken from his mother a day or two after birth -- and long before he was weaned.
Imprisoned calves.

He was chained here, inside this small crate, to restrict his movements and render him anemic. He will spend his entire shortened miserable life here...
A severely anemic calf attempts to walk -- on weak, wobbly legs -- to the truck that will take him to the slaughterhouse.

...never seeing the light of day...
A calf straining against his chains.

...until he makes his fatal journey to the slaughterhouse.

Who has done this horrible thing?

Has some depraved monster or lunatic with a penchant for torture chained him here? No.
A calf being hoisted up by a chain wrapped around his back leg.

In a few short months the calf's eyes will witness this scene -- reminiscent of Dante's Inferno.
A live calf, hanging upside-down, being sliced open by a butcher.

He will witness it, and then it will happen to him.
A butcher holding a head he had just cut off.

What sort of demons stoke these fires of hell...
The butcher hangs the decapitated head on a hook.

...and keep these scenes repeating millions of times a day?

Do bloodthirsty madmen run such an operation?

Again, the answer is no.
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