PETA India's recent undercover investigation of several dairy farms revealed shocking cruelty to cows and buffaloes. Tabelas – animal factories with no provisions for health care or animal welfare – are steadily replacing small family farms.
Buffaloes in Delhi's main dairy facility stand knee-deep in foul-smelling excrement, suffering from skin infections, foot disease and other illnesses. Garbage is piled up everywhere. Drainage, electricity and designated waste disposal sites are lacking.
In Mumbai, calves are tightly tethered on short ropes in order to prevent them from reaching their mothers, but in their struggle to get free, they often become entangled in the ropes and strangle themselves. One dairy owner reported that half the calves die shortly after birth.
An Endless Cycle of Abuse
Cows are beaten into submission and artificially inseminated so that they will keep producing milk. Although this practice should be performed by trained professionals, most cows are repeatedly inseminated by "barefoot healers" who ignore the most basic hygienic standards and use equipment that has not been sterilised, exposing cows to infections and diseases.
Most of a cow's day is spent confined to a narrow, filthy stall. Cows are injected with Oxytocin, an illegal drug that causes them to produce unnaturally large quantities of milk and suffer severe stomach cramps as though they were in labour. Cows are impregnated repeatedly. They grieve for every calf they deliver who is ripped away a few days after birth. Cows often develop mastitis – an infection of the udders – from rough handling and rumen acidosis from unwholesome food.
Other abuses documented by PETA's investigator include:
Buffaloes in Delhi's main dairy facility stand knee-deep in foul-smelling excrement, suffering from skin infections, foot disease and other illnesses. Garbage is piled up everywhere. Drainage, electricity and designated waste disposal sites are lacking.
In Mumbai, calves are tightly tethered on short ropes in order to prevent them from reaching their mothers, but in their struggle to get free, they often become entangled in the ropes and strangle themselves. One dairy owner reported that half the calves die shortly after birth.
An Endless Cycle of Abuse
Cows are beaten into submission and artificially inseminated so that they will keep producing milk. Although this practice should be performed by trained professionals, most cows are repeatedly inseminated by "barefoot healers" who ignore the most basic hygienic standards and use equipment that has not been sterilised, exposing cows to infections and diseases.
Most of a cow's day is spent confined to a narrow, filthy stall. Cows are injected with Oxytocin, an illegal drug that causes them to produce unnaturally large quantities of milk and suffer severe stomach cramps as though they were in labour. Cows are impregnated repeatedly. They grieve for every calf they deliver who is ripped away a few days after birth. Cows often develop mastitis – an infection of the udders – from rough handling and rumen acidosis from unwholesome food.
Other abuses documented by PETA's investigator include:
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Calves were tethered with short chains, often without any shelter.
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Workers kicked buffaloes to make them stand. Injured animals were hit with sticks and pulled by their tails.
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Bleeding buffaloes were denied veterinary care.
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Animals were covered in their own feces.
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Animals lived among heaps of garbage.
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Drinking water was filthy.
Facts
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Half the world don't drink it.
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Cows and other animals don't drink their own milk in adulthood.
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Man is the only animal who drinks milk of other species.
- India has doubled it's milk production between 2000 to 2005.
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60% of people don't have the enzyme to digest it.
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All of us produce an antibody against it.
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It's the top allergy provoking food, linked to asthma, ear, sinus and throat infections.
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The largest ever UK health and diet survey involving over 37,000 people, found the more milk a person drinks the worse their overall health, their digestion and immunity.
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Milk is not recommended for babies. Early feeding creates allergy in one in ten babies resulting in diarrhoea, vomiting, colic, eczema, catarrh, bronchitis, asthma, sleeplessness.
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A protein in milk, BSA, that dramatically increases the risk of child-onset diabetes, is an infant is given milk before the age of 4 months. 100% of newly diagnosed IDD children have antibodies to BSA, compared to 2 per cent in normal children.
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It is linked with autism, ADHD and possibly cot deaths.
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At least 5% of milk on shop shelves is reportedly contaminated with Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP), a bacterium linked to Crohn's disease.
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The higher a country's milk intake, the higher its incidence of cardiovascular disease.
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Milk consumption is strongly linked with breast and prostate cancer. For example, the chances of women in China dying from breast cancer are 1 in 10,000, as opposed to close to 1 in 10 for the UK. For prostate cancer the difference is even greater. In rural China the incidence is 0.5 in 100,000, yet it is estimated that, by 2015, 1 in 4 men in the UK will have a diagnosis of prostate cancer at some point in their lives. It is obviously not genetics since Chinese men emigrating to Europe soon end up with similar risk.
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Milk contains Insulin Growth Factor (IGF). IGF-1 is very rich in milk. It's doubly rich in modern milk, partly because cows have been selectively reared to produce milk during pregnancy. This milk is especially rich in oestrogen. On top of that, cows are treated with bovine growth hormone (BGH), which is a growth hormone capable of further increasing milk yield by about 12 per cent. All this means a cow's daily milk production has gone from 3 to 30 litres. Not surprisingly, this milk has two to five times the amount of IGF-1, while the beef from a BST treated animals has about double the IGF. Casein, the protein in milk, helps to carry the IGF into us. The more milk you drink the higher your blood level of IGF-1.
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The higher a woman's IGF-1 levels the higher her risk for breast cancer. One study found that women in the top 25 per cent of IGF-1 scores had two to three times the risk of women in the bottom 25 per cent of IGF-1 levels. A study from York University in the UK on the link between IGF and prostate cancer risk in men found a similar result. Men in the top 25 per cent of IGF levels had three times the risk of prostate cancer. These are just two of a dozen trials finding a strong link between circulating levels of IGF-1 and breast and prostate cancer.
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Despite all this negative evidence, the Government still tell us to drink it every day. Most people believe it's essential during pregnancy, breastfeeding and for infants. It isn't.
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The most of humanity's history we haven't drunk milk.
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