#the music imagery and word choice all chosen to make you feel angry and scandalized

[doctorstarlock]

This video evoked strong “I don’t have time to tell you how wrong you are…no it’ll bug me if I don’t” feelings. Don’t even watch it if you can’t stomach serious emotional manipulative because the guilt and fear she is trying to evoke in this video is real. But here are some highlights:

she equates artificial insemination to bestiality. Which is just. A freshly insane take I’ve never come across before. Girly, I can promise you that absolutely no one is getting their rocks off sticking their arm shoulder deep into a cow’s anus. And collecting bull semen is straight up dangerous. But like headspace said above, it’s cheaper and safer and results in healthier calves. Plus AI is healthier for cows and bulls because servicing can lead to injuries or venereal disease.

The “rape rack”, oml. Yes, that does exist. Yes, it’s a terrible name for obvious reasons. But artificial insemination of animals is not rape. It’s no more rape than if you were to let a bull physically service a cow in estrus. Animals do not attach morality to sexual activity. Animals do not have the concept of “consent” that humans do when it comes to sexual activity. If a male animal wants to hump, he does not think about what the female is doing, and the closest thing to consent he’ll get is, idk, her *not biting him or kicking him away. Again, for that reason, AI is just a safer way of getting the cow pregnant.

Calves are indeed usually separated from their mother within 24 hours. It keeps them safe from being injured by the dam, prevents infection from bacteria passed between mother and calf, and allows the farmer to inspect the calf and make sure it’s healthy. But this one is, admittedly, something that the dairy industry might slowly be changing.

Yeah, some calves are slaughtered for veal!! Sorry that people eat meat!! But that’s what cows are for! Can you imagine the cost of lots of male calves running around, more than are needed to breed, and they produce nothing so you’re just wasting money feeding them until they grow old and die naturally? I know fanatical vegans will fundamentally disagree here, but animal agriculture is not taking care of livestock for fun. It’s for food.

In that vein, she didn’t mention them in the video but you might notice clips of calf hutches. Those look bad but they’re to protect the calves from catching disease from one another.

This video used a lot of graphic video footage meant to upset and alarm, especially in regard to “downer” cows. A downer cow is a cow that collapses for any number of reasons and can’t get back up even after the reason they fell has been addressed. It can happen to any cow, not just old ones. Here’s why a cow goes down and what can be done to treat it. Emphasis on treatment, ie, slaughter is the last resort if a downer does not recover

“The natural lifespan of a cow that hasn’t been exploited is 20-25 years” what the ever-loving heck is the point of keeping cows that long. Again, agriculture is in the business of food. These animals are livestock, not pets. Continuing to feed cows that don’t produce is costly and wasteful. Dairy cows have been bred for domestication so turning them loose to live in the wild would be more cruel because they won’t survive. You do not understand how animal husbandry works.

She does make a fair point about the nutritional value of cow’s milk being trumped up Big Dairy propaganda, I won’t touch that

For the last time. To every animal rights activist out there who insists on coming after livestock agriculture. Animals who are well cared for make better food. Whether it be milk, meat, eggs, whatever. Yes, there are some big big problems with the meat and dairy industry. I can almost guarantee you that some of the most upsetting footage from this video is probably from big industrial dairy operations. Y’know, the ones that work on such a huge scale that their margin isn’t affected by bad quality meat or milk, as long as they make a profit. The ones that are unsustainably large and produce massive pollution. The ones that are run by corporations that lobby for kickbacks and less industry regulation and therefore are not usually affected by people jumping on their soapbox about their bad practices. But you know who is affected? Small, local farms that do care about their product, do take good care of their animals, do have incentive to farm sustainably, and also suffer the most when people try to give their profession a bad reputation. Small local farmers that are getting pushed out by industry consolidation and giant dairy operations. Psych, you read this far just to be told that the real issue with dairy farming is not animal abuse, it’s capitalism. Buy local, boys and girls.