Why isn’t vegetarian good enough? What’s the problem with eggs and dairy? The animal doesn’t die.. right?
I was a vegetarian for many years before becoming vegan. I thought vegetarian was the answer for a long time. A few years ago, someone who I had great respect for went vegan, and I began to question why. She began talking about the cruelty behind dairy and eggs which led me to do my own research. One google search about why dairy and eggs were cruel was enough for me to quit.
Let’s talk about dairy. I was under the impression that a cow only needed to be pregnant once and then could produce milk the rest of her life. I also thought that eating dairy didn’t hurt cows. I was wrong. Dairy cows live an average of 4-6 years, when their normal lifespan should be 20-25. Dairy cows are “artificially inseminated”, which is a “nicer” word for rape. She will then carry her child until he or she is born. Upon their birth, dairy calves will be taken from their mother within a few hours if they’re lucky. Most of them are separated within minutes. If the baby is a boy, he will be sent to the veal industry. He will live about three months in a confined space, unable to move in an effort to keep his muscles from developing; and then he will be slaughtered. If the baby is a girl, she will face the same terrible fate as her mother. Dairy cows will continue having babies and have the milk that was meant their babies stolen from them until they are too weak anymore. At this point, they go to the slaughter house.
It’s hard to imagine something so cruel is happening. I’ve found that the hardest part about being vegan is not the food, but rather facing the darkest side of humanity. I am blessed to have a very wonderful mother; the idea of being taken from her on the day of my birth, to then be murdered three months later, is terrifying. I am also blessed to have people in my life that I care very deeply for; the idea of them being ripped away from me without my knowledge of where they were or if they were okay is also horrifying. I would not want this to happen to me, or any other person. Why should it be different for animals?
There are also devastating health consequences to eating dairy. Milk is the mammary secretions of a cow intended to grow a calf into a fully grown cow- how can that be healthy for humans to ingest? Humans are the only mammals that continue to drink milk after we are weaned from our own mothers. No part of it that is natural. The idea of a fully grown man sucking the udder of a cow is off putting. Yet, why doesn’t someone drinking milk when it’s neatly packaged with a propaganda drawing of a “happy” cow on the front elicit the same response? Dairy is very harmful for our bodies. One of the main ingredients in milk is casein, which activates cancer cells in our body. T.Colin Campbell, a biochemist who studies long term nutrition in our bodies, replicated hundreds of studies where he injected rats with casein compared to a control group without, and the incidents of cancer in the rats subjected to casein was astonishing. The control group without casein did not show cancerous cells. (Animal testing is not something I agree with, but that’s a whole other article). Milk, even skim milk, have higher fat contents than meat and our bodies are extremely inefficient at digesting animal fats. Because of this, the fats get absorbed directly into our blood and are registered as highly acidic. When our body attempts to neutralize the acidity and save our kidneys, it leaches calcium and phosphate out of our bones to neutralize the acidity, which causes osteoporosis. America has the highest consumption of dairy as well as the highest rate of osteoporosis- no surprise there. Dairy is considered one of the worst things for our digestive system. It takes our bodies the longest amount of time to digest dairy, and it is a huge cause of constipation and other painful digestive issues. I’ve always found lactose intolerant pills odd. We are taking a pill to make us not feel so sick because we want to continue eating something that makes us feel terribly?
What about eggs? Chickens are born into farms and sorted by their sex. Male chicks are useless to the egg industry so they are killed the same day they are born. Most male chicks are ground alive but others die of suffocation from being thrown into large garbage bags with hundreds of other chicks. Female chickens can live up to 15 years if they are taken care of, but within the egg industry, they are slaughtered between 18 months and 2 years of age. Until then, they live horrible lives of confinement, disease, and abuse. Egg-laying chickens in battery cages are not allowed more than a standard notebook size piece of paper as space. In so called “free range” they are still only allowed the same 8 by 10 inches, they are just simply not in a cage. The term free range is a marketing scheme aimed to make people feel good about eating eggs, but in reality, it is still cruel. All companies have to do to earn the label “free range” is not use battery cages and have a small opening that leads out to grass somewhere on the premise; often times this opening isn’t even large enough for a chicken to exit from. Hens are malnourished all their lives, often enduring forced molting where they are starved for extended periods of time which causes their bodies to lay more eggs. Every time a hen lays an egg, she loses a large amount of calcium. Naturally, she would eat any un-fertilized eggs to regain the loss of calcium, but this clearly does not happen in the egg industry. Hen laying chickens are some of the sickest animals at the time of their untimely and unjust murder.
The health consequences of eggs are also very damaging to our bodies. Eggs contain the highest LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) than any other animal foods. This causes plaque build up in our veins and arteries which leads to many heart issues.
I hope I’ve shed some light on the effects dairy and eggs have on our fellow earthlings, cows and chickens. These are animals with thoughts and emotions just like us. They do not deserve what is happening to them.
Videos on eggs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsgDwSvkJdM&list=PLmIqdlomtuSvTFmLX36zaxJ0UvQy53tn9&index=2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZshUE1-zK-Y&list=PLmIqdlomtuSvTFmLX36zaxJ0UvQy53tn9&index=6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utPkDP3T7R4
Videos on dairy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjbt3SV5ek8
