Anna Pippus

Although I was vegan before becoming a mother, the entire basis of the dairy industry became particularly disturbing to me after I had my first child. Pregnancy and labour are hard, both mentally and physically. It takes months, even years to fully recover. They’re worth it, though, for the gift of a child.

Like humans, cows excrete oxytocin— the bonding hormone— at birth. Human mothers can express what this feels like: we say we would die for our child, we’re deliriously in love, we can’t believe such a love exists. This is the oxytocin talking.

I have two sons. If I were a cow, they’d both be dead by now, killed and eaten. I’d still be mourning them, and maybe others, too. However, it’s almost worse to think that if I had daughters they’d be suffering my same fate. Losing a child is any mother’s nightmare, but so is the knowledge that your children are suffering.

It would be excruciating for any sensitive species to watch their beloved child being brutally taken away, helpless to do anything, with no understanding of what was happening or why. Mother cows will relive that nightmare year after year until their bodies are depleted from back-to-back pregnancies when they’re killed and eaten themselves. To think we do all this for the sake of unnecessary dairy foods is difficult to comprehend.

Becoming a mother has only strengthened my belief that commercial animal agriculture is immoral and my resolve to work towards ending it. The perversion of motherhood is rampant throughout this grotesque system, beyond the gentle mother cows who grieve their children. It’s also present in the thousands of orphaned chickens in barns being raised for meat, peeping for their mothers and finding no comfort. It’s present in the pigs unable to stretch through the aches of pregnancy because they are so tightly confined, and never being able to snuggle with their babies as pigs love to do. It’s present in the chickens laying unfertilized egg after egg until their uteruses prolapse or their bones fracture from the loss of calcium.

I’ve seen footage of cows in milking parlours so fresh from birth that afterbirth is dangling down behind them. Their babies are gone, but there’s no time to recover or to mourn, they must be hooked up to machines to have their milk taken for humans. The system is sickening.

None of us would want to be impregnated again and again, to fruitlessly endure the challenges of pregnancy and labour, and ultimately to have our children stolen away from us. We shouldn’t put others through this either. Read More

KD Angle-Traegner

My son would be 21 years old today. He was born stillborn. Jonathon was full term and circumstances dictated that I was forced to have a natural birth, knowing that my son was already gone. I didn’t know then, and still struggle with now, how to cope with the loss of my first (and only) child.

My son was baptized the day he was born, with my family surrounding me. We took turns holding him, trying to absorb a lifetime of love from a child we’d never get to know. We took pictures, we held his tiny hands in ours— amazed at the tiny fingers and toes. But it couldn’t last and I knew eventually that I would have to call the nurse to come and get my son. I would have to call her, and once I did, I would never hold my son again.

I don’t know if I’ve ever made a more difficult call as when I pushed the button for the nurse. The time I spent with my son seemed to go by in a split second, it wasn’t enough— but my time was up.

As a mother haunted by this loss, I cannot help but think of the dairy industry and its never-ending cycle of forced pregnancies and stolen babies. Cows carry their young for nine months, building the biological bond with their children long before they give birth. They have deep maternal instincts, yet newborn calves are taken from their mothers within hours of birth, causing extreme distress for both.

My motherhood was erased when Jonathon died, much like the way we erase the motherhood of animals used for food. We pretend it doesn’t exist, because that’s easier than acknowledging the fact that we are taking babies away from their mothers. But the pain of loss is not limited to species. Neither is grief.

These animals create families. I have little doubt that they care for each other— not that I need that affirmation to care about their interests. We don’t have to be the same as non-humans to care about them as individuals. We only have to care. – July 14, 2016 Read More

Michelle Carrera

From the moment my son was born, our bond has been unbreakable, thousands of years of evolution tangling us in the purest of loves. A mother’s love for her child changes her. My son is my drive, my everything. When I think of dairy, I think of the heartbreak, helplessness, and desperation of mother cows being torn from their babies over and over again, having the milk they create exclusively to nourish their babies turned into a commodity, and my heart sinks with them. How can anyone in good conscience, especially mothers, support this horrific industry?

My little boy is my light. All of the work we do together in the community, distributing vegan food with Chilis on Wheels, stems from lessons I have learned from being his mom. “Love the whole world as a mother loves her only child.” – The Buddha Read More

Alkemia Earth

I had my first born at 19 years old. I was new to motherhood, but the art of mothering ran deep through me. I knew breastfeeding was my only option, and a natural birth was the only way to go. Years before, I had parted ways with dairy milk. Something about it didn’t sit right with my taste buds, even as a youth, but still I struggled with the desire for other dairy/animal products. Then one day, as I was waiting at a red light, first in line, headed to the mall with my daughter in the back seat, I saw the beginning of the end. I witnessed a semi-truck turning slowly in front of me, and in the back were hundreds of chickens being transported to…??

To this day, I can only imagine the probable outcome of what those chickens experienced shorty after, but what left a mark on me was the sight and state of those creatures. With temperatures in the high 70’s, and their cramped confining travel conditions, it reminded me of slavery. I felt so sad as I watched that semi turn slowly in front of me. The chickens looked like they were barely surviving. In that fraction of a moment, which seemed longer than it was, there was no separation between what I was observing, and myself. That day changed my life forever.

I breastfed all of my children until they were a little over 2 years old. My daughter was born with eczema, and I struggled with health ailments. At the same time that I was exploring this art of motherhood and self-healing, I returned, once again, to my mother (nature) for her guidance, and ancient wisdom. I had to sit with her, and listen closely like I did as a child. I had to ground myself, and pay attention. My daughter and I would sit, watch, and listen. I watched the ants. I watched the bees. I observed the clouds and the wind. I began to notice the subtleties in nature. I watched mother squirrels, rabbits, horses, and yes, the cows (I’m from Colorado).
I watched animals nurse their young just as I did, until it was time for them to chew the grass. I wondered why humans would nurse their young, wean them, and then proceed to take milk from mother cows and give it to the children they were no longer nursing. I wondered why some human mothers would choose not to nurse, only to take the milk of another species and give it to the children they chose not to nurse. Why were we the only species on the planet doing this? And what gives us the right to take milk from a nursing mother? What must the cows think of this and of us? And what were the health consequences of doing something so unnatural?

In my observation, there was no need to disturb and take from other animals. I turned to the plants, and let the animals be. They answered my questions, and healed my ailments, as well as my daughter’s eczema. I knew I was on the right path. What a gift we have as mothers, not only to bring life forth, but to produce all that is needed to sustain the life that we give. Read More

Marla Rose

When I gave birth to my son, I had already been vegan for seven years, and my commitment to veganism was unwavering— but I don’t think I ever connected as deeply to its principles, or empathized more with the poor mothers and their babies exploited by animal agriculture, as I did after my son was born.Due to a medical complication, my son had to be hospitalized for about a week after he was born, and it was positively wrenching despite the fact that he was given the best of care and had professionals tending to him around the clock. But even though we had full access to him, not being able to bring our son home, and away from that intrusive clinical space with all the machines beeping around him, was incredibly difficult.

When he was finally released, I spent weeks on end nursing him in bed, getting the hospital smell off of him, touching his soft skin, his downy hair, just staring at this beautiful being. I never wanted my son to be away from me ever again. Knowing full well what is done to mothers and their babies on dairy farms big and small around the world, this was a bittersweet time. My baby was safe; we were together. The same cannot be said for mother animals on dairy farms, whose babies are mercilessly taken from them so their milk can be stolen for humans for whom it was never intended. That unbearable loss is something that every mother should understand in her bones. Read More

Krista Simmons

As a first-time pregnant mother, I was consistently told my kid would need milk: not mine, but cow’s milk. So with my first baby, I did just that: instead of nursing, I gave him cow’s milk, not even considering that as his mother, my milk had everything he needed. As a result, we did not develop the attachment and bond that most nursing mothers develop with their babies from breastfeeding. And to this day, I deeply regret that.

Then I was given a second chance to get it right; once I found out I was expecting my second son, I knew I was going to breastfeed him. But it was a difficult pregnancy, and during my delivery there were complications that caused my son to be kept in the NICU for his first week of life. For several days I was unable to hold my son even as my breasts filled with the milk I desperately wanted to feed him. I began to pump every 2 hours, and soon I had so much milk for him, but no baby to feed.

On day 4, I was discharged and sent home without my son. It was a devastating feeling. This must be the feeling that a mother cow feels when her baby is snatched away from her. The bond a mother shares with her child starts during pregnancy. We naturally want to love and nurture our babies. Being separated from my newborn hurt me to my core. I was lost, confused and all I wanted was to feel him with me. The experience I suffered through is inflicted on all cows used for dairy: consistently pumping and producing milk with no baby to feed and fulfill that maternal longing. The only difference is that on day 6 I was reunited with my son and able to nurse him for the first time. Our bond was sealed. Unlike the cow, my son came home. And this is one of many reasons I will always be vegan. Read More

Mel Baker

My journey to motherhood was arduous. My pregnancy was grueling and labor was agonizing, but my love for my child was instant from birth, and the joy since that moment, inexpressible. A mother will endure any and all obstacles for that moment. A year after giving birth to my son, I was shocked to learn that cows used for dairy are slaughtered just as cows used for meat are. Equally dreadful, I learned that we kill their babies by the hundreds of millions globally. How could I as a mother knowingly continue to fund such an inhumane system, all so I could eat some cheese?

Mother cows, like us, produce milk only to nourish their young. That we take and kill those babies, and take their food to make ice creams and lattes from their mothers’ breast milk, is incomprehensible to me. Yet our society not only ignores the inherent cruelty, but celebrates the products made from it. All while denying the mothers of another species what we treasure most. It’s heartbreaking.

Six years on, I still experience indescribable shame for my ignorance and participation in this industry. My only consolation is the changes I made that day. Now, when I look at those mothers, at those gentle, placid souls, I cry. I touch their faces. I tell them “I am sorry.” And I tell myself, “no more.” Read More

Karen Ellis-Ritter

My experience as a mother profoundly deepened my opposition to dairy. I gave birth to twin preemies, 11 weeks early. They spent nearly 3 months in the NICU, wouldn’t latch, and needed my breastmilk to survive. I pumped every few hours, ‘round the clock for about 20 minutes at a time. Even though I was on this machine for short intervals, I still experienced excruciating blocked ducts, and painful thrush, among other problems. Cow mothers are on the pumps constantly, battling swollen, bloody teats and painful mastitis. But no relief comes to them. I imagined a role reversal, where my milk was taken for another species and I was robbed of my babies. What an unconscionable loss to endure. Read More

Caitlin Campbell

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The below is excerpted from Caitlin Campbell’s full article, A Young Mother’s Plea to Mothers Everywhere.

On the day of my daughter’s birth, I marveled at the billions and billions of living souls before me whose bodies had heaved and rolled through labor. On hands and knees, my body pulsed and contracted on my bedroom floor, and I pushed my daughter out into the hands of my midwife’s assistant. I felt connected to all of the other animals in this world — human or otherwise — who had ever endured this grueling, bewildering, humbling process. Soon I was astonished to feel my breasts burn and drip as they filled with milk every time my newborn gave me visual or auditory cues that she was hungry. This was a physical expression of love for another being like I had never experienced before, and was a testament to how much our bodies were synced and how essential we were to one another at that fragile time.

It was during these early days of nurturing Melody’s life that I was hit with an acute sense of grief for dairy cows. Just like human mothers, cows carry their babies for nine months, at the end of which they endure a long and painful labor. But once calves are delivered, they are stolen from their mothers within hours of birth in order for humans to take the milk intended for them. Instead of feeling the tingle of their mammary glands producing milk at the sight, sound, and touch of their tiny nurslings, for mother cows, that sensation is prompted by the sights and sounds of the unfeeling machines that crassly violate them once their children have been ripped away (and, if they are male, killed for veal).

I had visions of being forcibly separated from Melody and routinely strapped to a breast pump. I couldn’t imagine the sorrow of those hidden mothers, who are assaulted and robbed of their babies and bodily fluids so that we can use their milk as a non-essential ingredient in bars of chocolate and bowls of cereal. How can anyone who has felt the sore and painful love of birthing a helpless, trusting newborn wish this on another mother? Being a nursing mom, I’m devastated for the mothers and babies of this heartless industry. The dairy industry is at its core an abject betrayal of motherhood and the female body. Read More

I Visited A Small, Organic Dairy Farm to See If Animals Were Treated Better
By Robert Grillo, Founder , Free From Harm

While passing as mall dairy farm on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in the Point Reyes National Seashore in early October, I decided to pull over and have a closer look. I saw about 60 “heifers” in one large muddy, gated enclosure, up to their ankles in mud and manure. There was a lone calf, probably a male just born to one of the heifers, placed in a holding area where some of the cows were doting over him on the other side of the steel bars of a gate. To the right of them was a “milking parlor,” consisting of an old shed where two men were bringing cows in and out to be milked and hooking up their udders to milking machines. The cows perked up as I approached the fencing and stared meekly up into my eyes. And to the right of this was a section consisting of rows of small white plastic hutches, each with a single calf inside. When I pulled up, I saw a gruff yet handsome young man walking toward his tractor. I approached him to ask if I could have a look around the dairy farm. He asked me to wait a minute as he opened the valve to let the oil drain from his tractor. “You’re giving it an oil change,” I said. “Yes,” he said, “I’ll give that a chance to drain out while I show you around.”

His name was Ernest. I learned that he was the son of a family who owned this 200-head dairy farm for many generations, producing all pasture-based, grass-fed, organic milk. Ernest lives in the modest old frame house right across the road from this dairy operation, the same one many generations of his family lived in. To my surprise, he seemed very receptive to having an impromptu visitor, as he scraped away the manure to create a clear path on the ground for me to walk on leading to the calf crates. He started telling me about the calves before I even had a chance to ask, confirming that the plastic hutches were housing all newborn female calves. “The males are out of here right away,“ Ernest explained. “We have someone who comes and picks them up. I have no idea where they go.” They must be sold for veal or other kinds of meat, I said. And he nodded in agreement. “The females here are all separated in their own hutch, so if one gets sick, she doesn’t get all the others sick too.” Female calves considered fit for milk production are taken from their mothers on the day of their birth and placed in plastic hutches. Read more ​

I walked up to the first calf in a hutch and she approached me immediately, licking my hand cautiously through the fence and wanting to suckle. Others just cowered back into their plastic hutches, an expression of hopelessness and loneliness on their little faces. They were all just days or weeks old, in many ways like large puppies, only instead of bouncing around and wanting to play, their spirits were already broken. You could see it in their eyes. Their mothers were only forty or fifty feet away, yet separated by the large milking parlor shed which blocked them from viewing one another.

“Is there anything else you want to know about?,” Ernest asked. And so I asked him about artificial insemination. He seemed proud to tell me that he now does AI and breeds the cows himself. AI is farmer talk for forcing one arm all the way up the cow’s rectum and shooting a semen gun into her vagina with another. This humiliating violation of her body is performed repeatedly, until it is certain she is impregnated. “Come on, let me show you something,” he said, as he escorted me back to the mini feed lot where the heifers were standing in the mud. He pointed to one of the heifers in heat, which, he said, was indicated by the other female cows trying to mount her. He explained that he could buy the bull semen that guaranteed only females would be born, but that it’s too costly to use here.

I asked him how many cycles of pregnancy they would go through until they were considered “spent.” He explained that they keep the cows only as long as they’re producing more value in milk than the cost of feeding them. He recalls his grandfather telling him that the younger heifers produce better milk, so the younger, the better. “It’s a really tough business,” Ernest confessed. Lots of problems with the cows. Some can’t get pregnant; others have complications with pregnancies, like stillborns, or they develop diseases like mastitis, lameness, tumors, bovine leukemia and distended udders that look like they are carrying milk but are just full of fat cells. And as they sag, their teats get dirty and this affects the milk. None of these cows are economically viable, so they too, in their frail state, are picked up by the man he hires to take them where he never has been, where they are turned into hamburger.

All the while Ernest’s matter-of-fact, business-like demeanor showed no signs of acknowledging the emotional or physical suffering of the animals in his care. Having grown up in a family of dairy farmers for several generations, it was simply business as usual. As long as customers like Trader Joe’s continue to buy his organic, pasture-raised, grass fed milk, he’d remain in business, but it was clear that he was just getting by, perhaps one of the few independent dairy farms left in the region, in the country. Dairy farming is all he knows, but if he has sons and daughters, they will most likely find other professions. As I drove off and looked back in the distance at the farm, it seemed to exist as if a mirage in the midst of a vast desert, a kind of surreal gathering of invasive species in a vast and otherwise pristine coastal wilderness, one of the most diverse and cherished in the world. Read More

INVESTIGATION OF A FLORIDA COMMERCIAL DAIRY FARM By Animal Rescue Mission (ARM)

Richard ‘Kudo’ Couto is the Founder, Chief Executive Director and Lead Investigator of The Animal Recovery Mission (ARM). Before ARM’s inception in 2010, Kudo was a board member and investigator for the local SPCA. He was responsible for shining the light on illegal animal and horse slaughter farms in South Florida.

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Established in 2010, The Animal Recovery Mission (ARM) is a non- profit investigative organization dedicated to eliminating extreme animal cruelty operations worldwide. Our mission is to be an uncompromising defending force for the welfare of animals in addition to putting an end to and preventing pain, suffering and torture inflicted as a result of inhumane practices.

ARM did an undercover investigation at a dairy farm located in Okeechobee (Florida). As a part of its animal agriculture and factory farm focus, ARM agents obtained positions as employees in its efforts to unveiling the dark secrets behind the doors of the dairy industry. What was revealed, shocked even the most seasoned investigators of ARM, and confirmed rumors that the dairy farm is considered to be the most brutal operations of all of the dairy farms in Florida.

During this investigation, incriminating and disturbing video footage included, but was not limited to the following;

The cows are contained in over cramped holding barns during the 305 days a year of the milk production phase. Oftentimes, they overheat and collapse from exhaustion and heat due to the extremely poor living conditions and insufficient ventilation.

Cows are ridiculed and tormented as they are maneuvered to the milk production lines by the use of electrical prods, withstanding violent and excessive force.

Cows are beaten into submission with metal construction rods known as rebar. Undercover agents documented several forms of ‘home made’ torture tools, including a spear-like weapon that is used to repeatedly stab the animal in the ribs, inflicting wounds that are left untreated. They are also beaten over their heads and bodies with these rods.

As a result of the continuous and forceful beatings, the cows fall to the ground.

During daily milk collections, the cows are beaten over the head, punched, poked and kicked (including their sensitive udders) with other primitive tools, hooks and tools. The majority of these beating occur whilst the frightened animals are trapped in a metal headlock and unable to escape. The cows were witnessed to be maliciously beaten repeatedly for no apparent reason and deep wounds and untreated abrasions were evident.

During milking, workers are taught to grab the cows tail and forcefully bend/fold and possibly break the tail bones.

On the dairy farm, milk is collected from the cows three times a day. This means that, the animals are being subjected to major stress, discomfort, pain, torture and suffering three times a day, 360 days of the year. Through this investigation, it is clear that the workers on the farm have an unwavering and deep hatred for the dairy cows and the beatings relay an inferior respect of the animals’ welfare and rights to life.

Outside of the milking and holding barns, the abuse continues with the calves – considered as mere bi-products of the dairy industry. Sadly, the protocols on dairy farms are to rip the babies away from their mother, sometimes as they are born. On the Dairy Farm, the mistreatment of the newborn calves is evident.

Frightened, confused and desperate for their mothers these babies are isolated in rickety cramped enclosures, unlike those displayed on the Larson website. Left outside in the harsh environment, laying in mud and their own feces, the calves often face peril from prolonged exposures to the extremities of the weathering heat and inclement weather. If cover is provided, it is in the form of disintegrating, shredded tarps.

Observed during ARMs extensive investigation, is the close interaction of owner and operator to the treatment to the animals. This included the animal health, treatment and overall care and consideration of the dairy cows upon the Dairy Farm. On multiple occasions he was found to be either serving, or encouraging inhumane acts against the animals that caused unnecessary pain and suffering amongst the dairy cows under his custody and ownership.

In fact, milking barn #5 (as it is referred to) is under the owner’s DIRECT supervision. At no time during this investigation, did he reserve his criminal abusive acts nor did he reprimand or fire employees for the cruelty and maltreatment being executed upon the animals. Veritably, the opposite actions were produced when one of the former employees (and ARM investigator), who attempted to disclose animal abuse upon this operation, was served Instead, with a lawsuit to retract any statements of animal abuse concerns. This is in contradiction of the company’s own code of ethics, clearly lined out in the employment contracts.

ARM goals lie within exposing the dirty secrets that lay behind the walls of conglomerates of animal agriculture business, like the dairy industry. The chain of command and partnerships involved along the way from farmers to producers, distributors, and your local supermarkets, is causing epic animal abuse that occurs every single day.

With so many alternatives of dairy available in today’s society, there is an imminent need to end the cruelty associated within these operations for our own consumption. ARMs message stands to adopt plant based diets, compassionate lifestyles and to go vegan. Read More