There's a storm brewing around the practice of inducing dairy cows to abort their calves - a practice that has not, until now, been widely broadcast.
On the blog Homepaddock, the author has taken the view that animal activists are 'on the warpath' and tries to minimise the issue, in my view. You might like to visit the blog and express your thoughts. I have had grave concerns about this for sometime now and am pleased to see the issue being aired. I will post again as the discussion grows. As always, I welcome your comments.
*TV3 carried this report, which contained these statements:
- The issue has become an ethical dilemma for New Zealand's $6 billion dairy industry, with approximately 200,000 cows induced in New Zealand each year. Farmers say it's a valuable management tool, but are divided on its use.
- Inductions were introduced 40 years ago. They are legal but the government's code of welfare for dairy cattle says it's best practice not to do them.
The industry originally agreed to end inductions in October but it has since decided to gradually phase them out.
Here are some comments lifted from the TV3 site:
* I didn't know this was happening! This is a sick practice and I think the vets performing this should loose their licence and be charged with animal cruelty. I will now find out which farms are doing this and refuse to buy their milk because I will not encourage animal cruelty.
* I think this practice should be banned, just because farmers have done it for years, does'nt make it right to continue. I've worked on a few dairy farms and most the premature calves I've seen born have been born alive, on cold wet spring mornings. With them being premature they have very little hair and not even the energy to stand up for its first drink, just left laying shivering to death. The only way I've ever seen a calf put down is with a hammer, that can't be too humane.
14 comments:
Hardly ethical!
To put it mildly bsprout.
The TV3 story has more and I'll paste some of that in now.
Probably the same farmers whos wives meet to talk about how terrible it is that girls can have abortions; not so worried when it concerns $$$
It's the Dairy Farmer's Dark Secret Bio.
Shhhhhh!
Imagine if they did this to humans!!
We'll deal with the cow issue first Shunda, then humans. The aborting of calves will be a good wake up for the general public, so long as discussion isn't suppressed and the human abortion debate could emerge on the back of it, so long as ardent folk like yourself don't derail the easier to accept issue.
Patience my son.
Well ok then.
A guy at the meat works told me there is big money in cow foetus's, they waste nothing!
Yuck!
There's money in them?
I see.
Interesting really, how people are up in arms about a calf being killed to enable it's mother to be milked, yet have no problem with a human child being cut up alive and sucked out of it's mothers womb.....hhhmmnnn
Southernright - yes, although there have been many times when the 'human' abortion debate dominated the headlines. The induction of calves is different I believe, in that it provides for convenience that results in profit, whereas the other debate involves far more intense reasons and outcomes.
The image of human foetuses in a basin in a hospital is disturbing enough but certainly so is the image of a cold, muddy paddock strewn with dead and dying late-term calves.
As an ex-dairy farm worker i can say that in my experience this is just one of many practices used by farmers to grow more profit. And it disgusts me. As my boss said when I told him i couldn't take it anymore, "It's a factory but just outside." IMO the abuse of animals to maximise profit is part of a continuim which also includes abuse of people, whether that be human trafficing, slavery, organ harvesting through to smacking up your 'loved ones'. Our comfortable violence towards animals is not okay.
It would be fair to say that human abortion is generally done for convenience and regardless of the intense reasons or outcomes, like the induction of calves quite simply put, mercyless killing.
Marty - yours is a very sobering and poingant comment and I thank you for making it.
Southernright - I don't agree that
"It would be fair to say that human abortion is generally done for convenience ".
There are ofetn very sincere and serious reasons for a woman seeking an abortion and those reasons don't correlate at all with the reasons why dairy farmers cause their cows to abort.
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