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One of my reasons for being vegetarian is the discomfort, or even revulsion, at the nature of much of the factory farming that ends up supplying our food. Even for non-animal-based produce, the degree to which the manufacture of our grocery items are industrialised from start to finish is breathtaking. Equally breathtaking is the degree to which the advertising and marketing of our foods departs from the reality, either by distorting or avoiding the realities of the food lifecycle. Most large-scale food producers do not want you to know where your food comes from.

There are exceptions of course, and there are many small and medium food producers that use alternative production techniques and delivery as a differentiator, targeted at those who value those things, and who can afford them. The reason that the remainder of producers get away with it is that consumers do not want to know. Like climate change until recently, the modern food mass-production situation is an "uncomfortable truth" that has not yet had the attention and scrutiny it deserves.

While the large-scale production of meat gets the bulk of the attention of those against unnecessary animal suffering, the dairy industry has mostly escaped the negative press. Animals Australia is looking to fix this with its campaign on so-called bobby calves, the uncomfortable truth of milk production.

The campaign points out that in order to produce milk, dairy cows need to give birth every year. Because the calves aren't all necessary to either replace or grow existing dairy stock, and male calves less so, they are mostly slaughtered, often for veal. The calves are removed shortly after birth, shipped to slaughterhouses, sometimes taking to days to get there without food or attention, and then disposed of. In the meantime, the mother cow is giving the milk destined for the calf to a milking machine to be consumed by humans.

The campaign is not recommending abolishing the dairy industry; it is attempting to put reforms in place to reduce the suffering of the calves before slaughter. Understandably, the dairy industry is resisting these reforms. For more information on this and other campaigns, check out the Animals Australia site.

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To give a brief perspective on the dairy industry, it's worth referencing The Ethics of what we eat (link to my blog post, and Amazon) by Peter Singer and Jim Mason on the subject of milk production.

People... think that cows are placid animals without much of an emotional life. [...] Cows have strong emotional lives. They form friendships with two, three, or four other cows, and, if permitted, will spend most of their time together, often licking and grooming each other. On the other hand, they can form dislikes to other cows and bear grudges for months or even years.

...

At Lawnel Farm, Lovenheim watched a cow give birth, and begin to lick her calf, but forty minutes later a famrhand came and took the calf away. The cow sniffed the straw where the calf had been, bellowed, and began to pace around. Hours later she was sticking her nose under the gate to the barn in which she was confined, bellowing continuously. Meanwhile her calf was in another part of the farm, lying shivering of a concrete floor. Within a few days he was dead, and his body was lying on the farm's compost pile [ref provided].

...

Although the natural lifespan of a cow is around 20 years, dairy cows are usually killed at between five and seven years of age, because they cannot sustain the unnaturally high rate of milk production. Male calves that survive are sent to auction at an age when they can barely walk.

There is more information on the life of dairy cows on the Animals Australia fact sheet. There is also information from Dairy Australia on their animal welfare information page.

Disclaimer: I am a financial supporter of Animals Australia.

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In their book " The Ethics of What We Eat", authors Peter Singer and Jim Mason cover a lot of ground in their discussion of balancing our needs and wants for food with the impacts on others. To help guide suggestions on what we should be eating, at the end of the book they outline five ethical principles that they think most people will share.

1. Transparency: we have a right to know how our food is produced.
2. Fairness: producing food should not impose unfair costs on others.
3. Humanity: inflicting significant suffering on animals for minor reasons is wrong.
4. Social responsibility: workers should have decent wages and working conditions.
5. Needs: preserving life and health justifies more than other desires.

Based on this, they then look at the main classes of food and determine how well they adhere to these principles. Sadly, little of our supermarket food lives up to these principles. They point out that:

In supermarkets and ordinary grocery stores, you should assume that all food -- unless specifically labelled otherwise -- comes from the mainstream food industry and has not been produced in a manner that is humane, sustainable, or environmentally friendly. Animal products, in particular, will virtually all be from factory farms unless the package clearly states the contrary.

Remember that it's not in food producers' interests for us to know how our food is produced.

With all the potential impacts that food has -- on slave labour, animal exploitation, land degradation, wetland pollution, rural depopulation, unfair trade practices, global warming, and the destruction of rainforests -- you could easily become paralysed, as in a minefield, afraid to make any decisions. Fortunately, Singer and Mason remind us that " ethical thinking can be sensitive to circumstances". You need to weigh up your own interests in food choices, but don't outweigh the major interests of others affected by your choices. 

It's all about making better choices, and that comes from some knowledge of potential impacts, and of options. Making choices that promote one or more of the five principles above is a positive step.

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