Vegan parents kill baby by starvation (2 Viewers)

[snakybus]

"Shut up snakybus"

I'm on a roll today

 

[Squiggle]

you have more than one dad?

Classic Snakybus!

 

[MDR]

"But if we didn't eat beef and drink milk most of these cows wouldn't be alive in the first place"

Classic Ro

 

[Pat Pockets]

you have more than one dad?

Thats her in the middle

 

[Hector Grey]

I'm on a roll today

like ham.

 

[broken arm]

[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Pressure on milk prices has turned healthy male calves into the disposable scraps of dairy farming[/FONT]

The flesh run is what huntsmen call their daily round of collecting unwanted animals from nearby farms to feed to their hounds. These days, most of the animals they are called to remove are not sick but healthy newborn male calves - byproducts of the dairy industry. They have no market value and so farmers invite the kennels to shoot them and take them away.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2074539,00.html

 

[RSJ]

That article seems to be about giant superfarms. I've never heard of any farmer killing claves, much less for feeding to dogs. Jesus like.

Quick scan:

A few decades ago, the average lifespan of a cow was 10 lactations. Today it is three.

All of our cows get at least seven to ten lactations. I've never heard of an animal only naturally living six years.

As many as half of all dairy cows may go painfully lame in any one year after being made to stand on concrete, their udders too heavy for their hind legs.

That's bollocks too, some cows have trouble getting stones in their hooves and the odd old one goes lame in it's later years (as do we all), half each year is rediculously high. And besides, cows will only stand on concrete with a full bag while waiting to be milked, so that's probably an hour to an hour and a half a day, six months out of a year.

Maybe the situation is different in the uk, or maybe this article is biased (my money goes on the latter) but it reads like 80% shite to me.

 

[broken arm]

Maybe the situation is different in the uk, or maybe this article is biased (my money goes on the latter) but it reads like 80% shite to me.

it probably is as it's an issue of scale and mass production. this was on a documentary on tv recently.

most of the problem as far as i can see is the price people pay for milk. I blame the retailers and therefore Tesco.

i have come in contact with this dairy through work. http://www.tytanglwystdairy.com/home.htm - they seem to have happy cows.

 

[jane]

Hi Niall! I was wondering when you were going to weigh in on this.

I think the thing is, if these people who starved their baby to death were not vegans (and I hadn't realised they were also raw-fooders, but then, I don't think their diet was the issue), there wouldn't be an issue. You'd hardly see an article on "These were middle class yuppies who came home and ate processed food and had takeaways twice a week, it's no wonder the baby died."

Vegans breastfeed. Veganism is about not exploiting animals, but you, as a human animal, can feed your own young -- it's not exploitation. If someone has a bad diet, it's not because they're vegan, it's because they have a bad diet. HAving a diet that gives you all your nutrition takes a bit more work as a vegan (but that's because our 'healthy' diets involve getting lots of our nutrients from foods that are not healthy, thus masking our deficiencies with loads of foods that vegans simply wouldn't eat), but a vegan with a healthy diet is incredibly healthy.

I was a shitty vegan when I was a teenager, and my diet was crap. It wasn't because I was vegan, it was because I didn't take the time or make the effort to ensure I was always getting enough nutrients.

I knew vegans who ate a lot of processed food, which made them unhealthy, and I knew vegans and fruitarians who used it to mask an eating disorder. But that's because the diet doesn't define the person. Those people would have been chip-hounds and anorexics regardless.

 

[broken arm]

RSJ regarding UK dairy...

The average herd size in the UK is 92 cows per herd (with considerable regional variation), which is significantly above the average for the EU15 of 36. The trend is for herd size to increase

Yield per cow is increasing and is around 6,770 litres per cow per annum (again, much higher than the EU average)

* The industry is dominated by three large dairy processing plcs, and three large, and increasingly 'vertically-integrated' co-ops. Further rationalisation of these companies can be expected.


The five largest processors in the UK control more than two thirds of UK milk processing.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodrin/milk/dairyindustry.htm (DEFRA is the UK department of environment, food and rural affairs)

 

[broken arm]

check out this guy

 

[RSJ]

I should say, in case my defence of farming in ireland comes across as vegan bashing (for whatever reason), i also think this has 100% nothing to do with them being vegan. The media needs to group badguys so they can add a "what is veganism" sidebar or maybe try get an anti-veganism frenzy going so as to pull more news out of a tragedy. Same as that youtube video of geraldo vs o'reilly where some illegal immigrant knocked down and killed some dude - reilly was making it an immigration issue while geraldo was saying it was a simple drink driving issue, the immigration thing was irrelavent.

So yeah, media = bad, veganism = good, irish dairy farming = good, mass production/super farms = bad.

 

[snakybus]

like ham.

or sushi

roysh

 

[broken arm]

So yeah, media = bad, veganism = good, irish dairy farming = bad, mass production/super farms = bad.

eh?

 

[RSJ]

That's inneresting b'arm. As far as irish dairy farming goes, my parents just retired for a variety of reasons, but one of the main ones that was worsening steadily for the last five or ten years was the government trying to make farming more of a superfarm thing in ireland by making milk quotas stricter (the amount you can legally produce), sale of land and quotas was more difficult, the amount of paperwork was mind boggling, they closed down a lot of rural marts (so instead of travelling 2 miles on a quiet tuesday with animals for sale, we had to go 20 on a busy saturday, which is pretty unworkable seeing as you'd make probably five or ten trips in the day usually) and were basically trying to squeeze the small farmer out. Add to that our co-op (dairygold) was taken over by an ex-kerrygold VP who then made it his mission to run down the stock price so as to sell it back to kerry gold... It's shite. I suppose the type of farming i was basing my arguemt on is on the way out in a sense, but i still don't believe it's as simple as calves being killed so we have milk.

eh?

Oops, too early, fixed.

 

[broken arm]

but i still don't believe it's as simple as calves being killed so we have milk.

these things are never simple.

i know this seems like a silly question but what is the rate of innovation in Irish farming. I.e. diversification and development of value-added products? you know the tradition. farmers seeing themselves as farmers forever.... or it's dairy or nothing etc etc.

 

[jane]

I should say, in case my defence of farming in ireland comes across as vegan bashing (for whatever reason), i also think this has 100% nothing to do with them being vegan. The media needs to group badguys so they can add a "what is veganism" sidebar or maybe try get an anti-veganism frenzy going so as to pull more news out of a tragedy. Same as that youtube video of geraldo vs o'reilly where some illegal immigrant knocked down and killed some dude - reilly was making it an immigration issue while geraldo was saying it was a simple drink driving issue, the immigration thing was irrelavent.

So yeah, media = bad, veganism = good, irish dairy farming = bad, mass production/super farms = bad.

Yeah, and let's remember that some organisation that was part of the beef lobby sued Oprah Winfrey for libel after she told people they should cut down on red meat, and plus, there's still a huge element (here, too) that assumes there's something wrong with you if you don't eat big piles of steaming meat.

Another problem is that the small farms in Ireland are dying out, which means that there will be fewer farms with greater methods of mass production. Of course, once we get used to shitty milk, we'll forget what delicious milk and butter ever tasted like, but it's really scary. It's bad for people and bad for animals. I heard recently that in 2020, there will only be two dairies in Ireland, and that most small farms will be gone. Tragic all around. The only people who benefit are the big agri-businesses.


Oh, and yeah, (slightly off-topic, but following on from RSJ's thing) it's interesting that recently, in the Irish media, the nationality of people they talk about is being de-emphasised. It still gets mentioned, but more often because it's relevant. There are still times when it's needlessly highlighted, but at least we are less likely to see shit like "Three people and two non-nationals..."

 

[magicbastarder]

from what i've seen, there's not enough regulation of irish farms in the sense that i've seen a few farms where the farmer has nothing but contempt for his animals or for any sort of litter laws.
i'm not saying all farmers are like that - far from it - but these fuckers should be clamped down on, and clamped down on hard.

 

[jane]

from what i've seen, there's not enough regulation of irish farms in the sense that i've seen a few farms where the farmer has nothing but contempt for his animals or for any sort of litter laws.
i'm not saying all farmers are like that - far from it - but these fuckers should be clamped down on, and clamped down on hard.

I'm sure those dudes exist, just like there are arseholes with no respect everywhere. But even a notional adherence to the REPS scheme (even if they have contempt for it) means that it's at least a wee bit better. I'm not sure exactly how thorough or frequent inspections are, but.

 

[RSJ]

i know this seems like a silly question but what is the rate of innovation in Irish farming. I.e. diversification and development of value-added products? you know the tradition. farmers seeing themselves as farmers forever.... or it's dairy or nothing etc etc.

I have no idea to be honest. I don't think there was much change in the process on our farm as long as i was helping out (the last probably ten to fifteen years). We were always 100% dairy, as were almost all the farmers i knew/know.

I should also mention, seeing as you said UK farms typically had 90 odd dairy animals, we had between 70-100, and my dad was running it alone unless i was around at weekends or in the summer. Super farms i imagine would have thousands of animals.