Milking my humanity

As I've mentioned before, we're about to move. Our current place is too small for us to explore self-sufficiently much further, so we're off to the next biggest place we can afford.

This is a google image of our current place. You can see how small our yard is... This was taken before we moved in and installed all our greenery though. Our four garden beds are lined up where the (A) is. The house is strictly north facing which means the Camphor tree in the neighbours yard keeps the hot afternoon sun off the veggies and the chooks. To be honest, I'm pretty proud of what we've been able to achieve in our little yard. For most of the year we were able to provide about 50% of the veggies we ate, we planted three fruit trees, a blueberry and strawberry patch, all our eggs, and we started growing fish to use as one of our main protein sources. I was particularly keen to get the fish moving. 

I don't LOVE eating fish, but I do love animals so this was really important to me on not just an environmental level, but a moral one too. 

Nowadays the state in which animals farmed for food and their welfare is pretty well documented. Words such as over-crowded, debeaked, caged, darkness, stress, soft bones, and antibiotics are synonymous with the meat that is produced and consumers buy in Australia. 

With this in mind, especially with a toddler, I was torn between having meat in our diet and doing the "right thing." What to do? This is where the aquaponics project was born. This was the best way I could think of to have "meat" in our diets without the cruel cost.

This is part of the reason for the upgrade. Sure we wanted a bigger living space indoors, but given we spend so much time outside, the bigger yard was essential. This is a birds eye view of the new place with it's much more efficient, pathless, square yard. I'm really looking forward to being able to install bigger tanks and more garden beds. Our aim is to be fully self-sufficient on at least the fruit and veg front. Hubby and I had talked about it and concluded that as far as meats go, we would primarily eat fish but still have a bit of red meat here and there.

Alas, tonight I was looking into the rest of the items in our diet that impacts animals and I've been absolutely horrified and saddened by what I've discovered.

MILK!

We decided to switch to A2 milk a good 12 months ago now, thinking we were doing the right thing buying milk that had no GMO content and was about as close to the "real thing" as you could get in the supermarket. I'm still under the impression that this is true, but what I'm horrified over is the dairy industry itself. I also liked that A2 milk isn't watered down and is made solely of milk, not the leftovers from the manufacture of other products (such as cheese).

I thought cows would be the same as humans--once they have a baby they will produce milk for as long as they are milked (we've all seen women on TV who breastfeed their kids until they're 10). Alas, this is ultimately true but the rate of milk production reduces gradually over time. How does the dairy industry combat this? They force cows to calf at least every 12 months and thus the veal industry is born!

Cows are artificially impregnated, they birth at the dairy farms, their babies are removed after approximately 12 hours and then (this is the laughable part) because Australian laws do not allow bobby calves* to be slaughtered until five days old the babies are kept in holding, fed ONCE a day on milk REPLACEMENT then sold off to an abattoir to be served up at a premium in your local restaurant and supermarket.

The treatment of the babies is enough to make me sick in itself but that's really only half the issue. These poor mummy cows birth every year and never get to live as a normal cow, chomping grass and standing around in a paddock mooing with their baby. Not just that, think of the physical stress of going through that every year! I'm pregnant for the second time in three years now and I feel bloody awful--I'm not doing this again!

To top all that off tail docking is legal in NSW as is teat clipping (yes, "teat clipping" it's exactly what it sounds like.)

Alas, back to the point. We've got our new house coming in two more weeks and we had veg, fruit and the meat industry in our sights. Now I'm suddenly appalled by the dairy industry and will never look at milk the same way again.

From what I've found A2 is the only company that actually mentions bobby calves on their website, but they don't make any promises, they just claim to support the welfare of bobby calves.

I'm pretty confident I'll never buy milk again... but I will finish what's in the fridge. If these poor girls went through all that just to bring me some milk, the least I can do, since I've already bought it, is drink it.

*a bobby calf is a baby cow who has been separated from its mother at less than two weeks of age.