For the mothers who give us our milk

Bobby calves are transported, sometimes over long distances, to abattoirs for slaughter. The RSPCA has identified a number of specific animal welfare concerns regarding the transport of bobby calves to slaughter:

• Like all young animals, they have underdeveloped 'following' behaviour, which means that they do not stay together as a group in moving to where they are herded. This makes moving and loading/unloading difficult and can lead to rough handling.

• Only a few days old, bobby calves are too young to handle the stress, motion and length of transport.

• They are exposed to the elements, are not provided with bedding and often have little room to lie down during long transportation and while awaiting slaughter.

• They are too young to be without milk for extended periods.

Under natural circumstances they would feed about five times a day. A proposed legal standard is currently under consideration for incorporation into the Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines – Land Transport of Livestock to legally deny bobby calves "liquid feed" (milk) for 30 hours during the period of transportation and slaughter. This would worsen the conditions allowed under the current guidelines which recommend a ten hour period. It is worth remembering, when considering what obligations we owe to these poor innocents, that they are the babies for whom the milk is actually made.

Is it irrational to suggest that the level of compassion we afford others should be commensurate with the degree to which their present circumstances are due to our actions and desires? In this case our desire for, of all things, their mother's milk.

Research shows that cows and other farmed animals are capable of feeling strong emotions such as fear, pain and anxiety.

The fundamental truth that cow milk is produced by mothers for babies that are taken from them, is one that is not widely acknowledged. It is hard to know if people are aware and just don't care or if the consumption of bovine baby milk is so culturally ingrained that it just doesn't occur to question its origins. At some level, a process of denial takes place.

In a recent paper Deidre Wicks explores the complex processes of denial that operate at both a personal and societal level, allowing people to 'not see' and 'not know' about the realities of the lives of animals in our world. In this way, good people can co-exist in silence in the midst of widespread animal suffering.

Something that seems natural, which is deeply culturally imbedded, can in fact be far from natural. The systematic harvesting and consumption of the mother's milk of one species by adults of another species far beyond the age of weaning is as unnatural as it is cruel. As Dr Frank Oski, former Director Paediatrics at John Hopkins University has stated "there is no reason to drink cow's milk at any time in your life. It was designed for calves, not humans, and we should all stop drinking it today."

The dairy industry is built upon a brutal cycle without end. Sustained by repeated forced artificial impregnation, these mothers are torn from their babies soon after birth and then milked for so long as their existence is deemed profitable. A repeated motherhood cycle that is inherently cruel, with the sons thrown aside for slaughter, the mothers grieving for taken children and the daughters brought into their mothers' fate.