This International Womens Day, SAFE is asking people to look at the dairy industry from a new perspective – her perspective. For too long, mother cows and their babies have suffered at the hands of an industry which views them as either production units or waste products.
‘We need to break the bias that has allowed this exploitation to continue for as long as it has, but to do so, we need people to see cows for who they are and what they experience, not for what they can produce’ writes CEO Debra Ashton.
Every year in New Zealand, around 4.5 million mother cows helplessly watch as their newborns are taken away from them so that their breast milk can be harvested for human consumption. Female calves are raised by humans to one day replace their mothers in the milking shed, while male calves are sent to be slaughtered at just a few days old.
This cycle of pregnancy, birth, separation and milking occurs for five to six years, until mother cows can no longer produce enough milk to be profitable by the dairy industry. She is then sent to slaughter at a fraction of her natural lifespan of up to 20 years.
Thankfully, more and more people are recognising that there is no need to consume the breast milk of another animal. Plant-based milk and cheese products continue to flood the market, and dairy farmers are choosing to transition to more sustainable forms of farming.
SAFE is committed to uncovering the dairy industry’s dirty secrets for everyone to see, so that together, we can create a future where mothers and their babies are no longer exploited based on what their reproductive systems can offer.
Stand with SAFE, mother cows and their babies by telling the world you’re Done with Dairy.
