Pusturized Milk
[a Lisa Carver socio-commentary]
I’m going to assume you know the conditions animals are kept in in farms, and just tell you this one thing I just learned: cows infected with mastitis — which would be just about all of them, due to the conditions that I’m not going to talk about … well, they cut their nipples off so the pus and blood can drain. Right into the milk you drink. I’m looking at a picture of it right now. Okay, so, the USDA’s restrictions on blood and pus in milk are totally lax.
I buy organic because I thought that meant the animals roam around free, but I heard that in fact it means only they have to have the OPTION of going out into the yard for, say, fifteen minutes a day. But they bottleneck at the doors and most don’t make it out. Or they’re too frightened by the sunlight to go. This is so heartbreaking. I mean, I’m in favor of wildlife preservation too, but the way farm animals live these days … I feel such urgency. They’re prisoners. They lead entire lives of physical and psychological torture, often dying of it (and then we eat their bodies shot full of antibiotics and naturally occurring constant fight or flight hormones, which is not at all natural!). They kill and cannibalize each other, starve to death, are trampled, chained, eaten alive. They literally eat shit. This is going on right now, and now, and now, too. It’s overwhelming to think about. So if you want to do one thing that may have an actual effect, please email the Honorable Hardy Myers at doj.info@doj.state.or.us and urge him to put a stop to the particular cruelty towards cows at Threemile Canyon Farms in Oregon. The Humane Farming Association has brought down bigger hell-farms than this before. They do a good job.
And, um, the workers don’t use anesthetics when they cut the nipples off.
-from Lisa Carver