Big Organic Organic Milk brand that ACTUALLY follows the "humane" aspect of organic practices?
As we all know, most dairy and poultry farms, claiming to follow "organic practices", have to compromise their "humane" standards, due to high demand. Does anyone know of a milk brand (available in Canada), that contains no hormones, drugs, anti-biotics, chemicals, etc, that DOES follow humane practices with the animals? Most big name organic companies are actually owned by big name NON-organic companies, and are sub-standard to what people think of, when they see "organic" on the label.
Unless you find a wild mother animal and start sucking at it's teats then no milk is humane... actually even doing that would be cruel so the only milk you could find would be human breast milk.
Dairy cows are the hardest worked animals on the farm. Cows only produce milk when they have young to feed. Naturally cows would bear young once every 2-4 years but this just isn't profitable enough to farmers so they are impregnated every year and then when a calf is born, it will be taken away from it's mother so it doesn't drink the milk which is rightfully theirs but sold to humans instead. To make her even more profitable the cow will be impregnated as soon as possible so she has the double burden of producing milk and nurturing a calf inside her at the same time. This causes extreme stress on the legs which is why 50% of cows become lame from the stress put on their legs. Also, cows have been bred and manipulated over the years and now they produce ridiculous amounts of milk... the reason why 1 in 3 cows will develop mastitis. If she gives birth to a female then the calf will have much the same life as her mother... un uncomfortable existence, having her calfs taken away from her year after year until she's finally 'spent' and killed for her meat just a quarter of the way through her natural life. Male calfs are either killed at birth or sent to the veal market in europe to be slaghtered for their meat.
That isn't just the worst cases... it's common practice. ALL dairy farms will cause the animals distress. Organic may be better for humans but it doesn't mean the animals are any happier.
In India, the conversion to organic agriculture far more ironic than in the Western countries.
India's farmers are still mostly practicing organic methods, passed down for Milena. Organic fertilizer and natural pest control are the only tools available to most of these farmers, who have always lacked the financial resources to explore chemical solutions. But these farmers, whose produce is as organic as they come, cannot afford to pay the fees required to gain official certification.
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on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Hydroponic Grow Systems.
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