I had a question from Mavin in Texas about whether its ethical to drink milk or not, so after my previous post about reducing meat consumption I thought I'd talk about this. Drinking milk isn't fabulous for the environment, because cows produce a lot of methane and this greenhouse gas contributes to global warming and climate change. But there are ways in which you can reduce the impact that drinking milk has on the environment, and I think if you do these its perfectly justifiable to continue drinking it. After all, if you're trying to cut out a lot of red meat from your diet, you're going to need some protein from somewhere, and full fat milk will be a great source of that. Its probably better to be vegetarian and continue drinking milk than eat lots and lots of meat and cut milk out completely.
A lot of cows kept for milk are farmed intensively, which means they live in pretty awful conditions and have very short lives. Intensively farmed dairy cows are kept in sheds for a lot of the time and hardly ever see daylight. They are kept pregnant for most of the year so that they continue producing milk, and this is such a strain on them that their milk production drops after a few years and they are slaughtered, even though a healthy cow would normally live for 20 years. Because they are pregnant for so much of the time, they produce an awful lot of calves. Because keeping every one of these calves would result in a huge cow population, a lot of them are killed to produce more meat for hungry humans.
So what's the solution? I don't know about the situation in Texas, but here in the UK an alternative is to buy organic milk. Organic milk will have come from cows that live in much better conditions, being outside in fields for much of the time, and will not have been reared intensively. They will be fed only on organic feed, which reduces the impact of farming cows for milk on the environment even further. Look for the soil association mark, which indicates that the producer of the milk has been awarded organic certification for the product:
Organic milk usually costs about a third more than normal milk in UK supermarkets but sometimes the price will be equal, because of supplier issues. If its the same price as the normal milk, go for the organic one! It means so much better welfare standards for the animals, as well as a lower impact on the environment.
2 comments:
Interesting information, I can't live without milk. I've tried organic milk btw and loved it but yeah here in the states it can be expensive.
I was also noticing your blog's title background picture of power wind mills and it made me think of how much Texas is expanding their power wind mills around the state very much. Almost everytime I drive around out in the countryside there are always huge semi trucks with huge wind mill blades on board them and I'm also seeing more wind mill farms with tons of mills. The expansion for wind mills is exploding here in the states for obvious reasons same goes for solar panels as well.
Later. :)
Thanks for your post. Found you while searching on the ethics of milk production. A mate of mine has tried several times to go vegan on account of animal cruelty, but keeps failing because it's just so difficult. I suggested he just went veggie, but he can't get his head round the treatment of cattle in the dairy industry. Solution? Organic! Thanks :o)
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