there’s more than shown here and it’s more than just these users too 😭
if you find the thread don’t piss in the popcorn (brigade) but also please maybe don’t bring it back here i don’t want 400 notifications of entry level “is almond milk milk” vegan discourse
Commie thinks that milk is just a byproduct of cows existing. Friendlymessage correctly points out that you need to repeatedly get cows pregnant, take away their calves, and feed them to produce milk and nobody would do it if there wasn’t a market demand. In essence, there’s zero situation where milk can be ethically vegan if that’s your ethical framework.
Commie implied that milk was farmed before markets existed and I was honestly baffled
I didn’t have a good grasp of history. apparently we mined before developing agriculture, which is wild to me.
What would mining have to do with agriculture and therefore milk?
mining was the Genesis if trade, but it’s assumed it would have followed trade. I also was mistaken that trade would, therefore, follow animal agriculture.
risking incivility, duh.
it’s an animal product
I never said that
no u
😾 meanie head
Edit: incorrect: You don’t need to keep getting them pregnant, you just need to consistently keep milking them. Milk production continues for as long as it is not left untaken. Definitely not vegan at all.
That’s absolutely incorrect. It’s a significant amount of time, around 10 months, but you have to repeatedly get a cow pregnant over their useful life in order to continue getting milk from them. They will go dry faster if you don’t milk them, but the cycle of pregnant/lactating/dry/pregnant is fundamental in managing a herd.
I stand corrected.
This is btw one main reason why milk is murder, because many of those calves are often killed for their meat. The other reason is that cows stop beeing productive and are killed way before their natural death, since the replacement calves are rdy to go (I think it was something like after 5 years with their natural life span beeing around 25, but I’m not sure if I remember correctly).
A bit oversimplified, but just to add a bit more context why vegans don’t drink milk.
What about plant-based milk such as Soy Bean Milk - would that work as a suitable less resource intensive alternative?
At least 50% of them are killed - very, very few males make it to adulthood.
this is incorrect
Not this time, I don’t think. The internet says that male calves are typically killed for meat at 18 months old, but would reach adulthood at 4 years of age. One male breeder adult is rented out to other farmers for a fixed period to impregnate the whole (female) herd. All the other males are killed. So few males make it to adulthood that it’s not normally even one per herd. Cows are usually killed if they don’t get pregnant after a number of tries. There’s no sense farmers spending a lot of money keeping an animal alive to not even get any milk from it, and there’s not a lot of profit in farming in my country for them to sentimentally keep animals alive.
18 months is full weight
“many” is doing a lot of lifting here.
the majority of Castle are slaughtered at full weight. hardly any become veal
The majority of male calves are killed at 18 months for meat (equivalent of about 6 in human age) once they’ve put on enough weight. “Veal” is if they’re killed under 12 months, which is rarer, but adulthood is a couple of years later, and yes, not just many of the calves, almost all of the male ones.
Dairy cows are killed once they’ve been milked for a few years as yields start to fall and become uneconomic. They typically live for six or fewer years, but their natural lifespan would be more than 15.
“Many” isn’t doing a lot of lifting, it’s doing a lot of understatement.
18 months is full weight
Under 12 months is veal, so you were correct that most don’t end up as veal.
But they count as calves until adulthood, which is nearer age 4. They’re normally killed for meat at about 18 months or six in human years. They do continue to put on weight into adulthood, but less rapidly than in the first 18 months, so you get a better return on investment by killing them while they’re still calves, because you’ve saved half your costs but got 3/4 of the weight in meat, and the meat is more tender and marketable.
So not quite full weight, and definitely still killed as a calf, not as an adult.