The Myth about Happy Cows

Factory Farmed Cattle

A Cow’s Life

And the Cow Goes Noooo

Dairy Cows

Veal Calves

Beef Cattle

Take Action

A Cow’s Life                                                                             Back to Top

Cattle, domesticated centuries ago, arrived in the United States in the late 1500s. They are intelligent, sensitive, and curious animals whose hearing is far better than humans and whose sense of smell can detect odors up to six miles away. They are also known to have great memories: they can find their way home after being transported to another location, and they can recognize more than 100 members of their herd.

When given the chance to live a healthy, normal lifespan of 25 years or more, cattle will form family units usually with one bull (intact male), several cows (females who have had at least one calf), and their calves (infant males and females). Their diet consists of a wide variety of plant life.

Cattle are social animals with distinct personalities and generally interact with their peers in complex ways. They have best friends and form cliques with a set hierarchy. The leader of a herd is usually the most intelligent and experienced of the group. Relationships, especially between sisters and mothers and their female offspring, are particularly close.

Cattle engage in mutual grooming and lick one another to show they care about their friends; the more bonded they are, they more they lick each other. Along with forming friendships, they also can hold grudges against both herd members and humans who hurt them.

And the Cow Goes Noooo                                                        Back to Top

Suzie was about to be loaded on a freighter when she turned around, ran down the gangplank, and jumped into a river. She eluded capture for several days before she was rescued and sent to a sanctuary for farmed animals. Emily, heading toward a slaughterhouse, jumped a five-foot gate and escaped into a wooded area. She was rescued by owners of a sanctuary where she now resides.

When we think of cattle, we often conjure up the picture of these huge animals grazing in a green field, with their offspring nearby frolicking in the sun and fresh air—the image of the happy, contented cow. Today’s cattle are far from contented and this image is ever-becoming simply a myth. In fact, most cattle raised today for either slaughter or dairy products live a life of deprivation and disease.

Dairy Cows                                                                               Back to Top

Five million dairy cows live in intensified factory farming operations. To maintain a steady supply of milk, these cows are forced to give birth every year for about three to four years until they are no longer able to produce enough milk to make them financially justifiable to the dairy industry. They are then sent to slaughter. Their offspring become part of either the dairy industry if female or the veal industry if male. Regardless of the direction these calves take, they are taken from their mothers immediately following birth.

Dairy cows are kept in indoor facilities where they are fed and watered. They do not go outside and graze or spend time in the sun. Their urine and feces are removed mechanically. Their milk is removed by machines hooked up to their udders. Their tails are docked to make access to their udders easier for the person hooking up the machines. Research shows that this surgery, done without the use of anesthesia, is painful and causes chronic pain for many animals.

Through modern technology and genetic manipulation, today’s cow can produce as much as 100 pounds or about 12 gallons of milk a day. In the natural world, a cow would produce about 10 pounds or 1 gallon of milk a day—milk for her offspring and no one else. Humans are the only species that drink the milk of another species and continue to drink it beyond the age of weaning.

Cows are injected with a genetically engineered, synthetic hormone called recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), which causes them to produce more milk. As a result of this intensive increase in production, cows’ immune systems are stressed. They often suffer from mastitis, a painful condition of the udder caused by bacteria, and milk fever, a calcium deficiency brought about by intense milking. Both conditions flourish in the stressful and unsanitary conditions of factory farms.

To keep these animals alive and producing more milk, they are given antibiotics and other drugs. These drugs find their way into the finished product. As long as drug residues are at “safe” levels, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows the milk to be sold. There are no FDA requirements to label milk coming from BGH injected cows. Milk producers in Canada and the European Union (EU) are not allowed to use BGH.

Veal Calves                                                                              Back to Top

The veal industry was created out of the dairy industry. There is no use for a male calf in a dairy herd. Not wanting to lose money on these animals, dairy farmers created the veal industry. Male calves are taken from their mothers at birth, or within the first 24 hours of life, and placed in veal crates, typically no bigger than 22" wide and 58" long, where they spend their entire lives, lying in their own urine and feces and chained to the bars of the crate. At approximately 18 to 20 weeks, they are slaughtered. By removing calves immediately from their mothers, the mothers can be impregnated sooner.

To keep their much prized tender meat white, the calves are fed a milk substitute deficient in iron. Anemic conditioning prevents the calves from developing tough, red muscles—an attribute undesirable in veal meats. Many calves will lick any exposed metals they can find in their crate area in an attempt to acquire the iron that is deficient in their diet.

This unnatural diet also causes chronic diarrhea in many calves. The calves are never allowed outdoors or even to stand, move around, lie down in a normal position, or stretch out in their crates. They are kept in near or total darkness to keep them quiet. Any movement would cause their flesh to form muscle mass and that would lower the value of the final product. Because they are living in such confined quarters and eating an unnatural diet, they often suffer from respiratory and intestinal diseases. 

To counter the effects of this unnatural life, calves are given a wide variety of antibiotics and other chemicals, which often are still in their system at the time of slaughter. Drugs, such as penicillin, tetracycline, sulfa drugs, and clenbuterol, have all been found in meat destined for the family table.

Beef Cattle                                                                                Back to Top

Approximately 41 million beef cattle are slaughtered in the United States each year. Cattle raised for beef usually start their lives in a more normal fashion than those raised for the dairy and veal industries. They do live on open range land where they eat a more traditional diet. However, they are not provided adequate protection from weather extremes or veterinary care if they become diseased or injured.

As in the days of the “Wild West,” beef cattle are branded with hot irons to show ownership. Branding, a century-old custom, is accomplished by placing a hot iron against the animal’s skin and burning the rancher’s mark into the cattle’s flank. A modern equivalent is freeze branding where a super cold or chilled iron is placed against the skin, causing pigment cells to be altered. When hair grows back, it is white. Also, they have their ears pierced with identification tags, and males have their testicles cut off. Each of these actions is performed without the use of anesthesia.

Some cattle may have their horns gouged out (de-horning or disbudding) to protect the animals from each other and the humans who are working with them. Others will have a notch taken out of their necks. The procedure, called waddling, creates marks large enough for ranchers to identify their cattle from a distance. Both of these procedures are performed without the use of anesthesia.

Life on the range ends at about one year of age when cattle are shipped to feed lots also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where they are fed a diet of mainly corn. CAFOs, also referred to as feedlots and stockyards, are giant, zero-grazing lots where beef cattle are raised until slaughter and where overcrowding, unsanitary grounds, and substandard feed contribute to health problems.

This intense confinement of cattle on feedlots increases the need for injecting them with antibiotics and hormones to keep them healthy and get them to slaughter weight. The EU has banned the use of hormones and, therefore, has banned importation of American beef products using hormones.

Cattle are then shipped to slaughterhouses. Technically, only those animals who are able to walk to their slaughter are slaughtered. Downed or downer animals are to be euthanized, so they do not get into the food production process. However, each animal represents a financial investment to a myriad of people involved in food animal production; so these animals may be prodded to stand upright and stagger into the slaughterhouse. Those who cannot make it into the slaughterhouse are often left for dead on piles of other animals so rejected. Those animals on the bottom of the pile often die of suffocation; those on the top of exposure.

Raising beef cattle is detrimental to the environment. To produce a pound of steak, factory farmers use 2,500 gallons of water and a gallon of gasoline and destroy 35 pounds of topsoil due to erosion. In tropical countries, forests are leveled to clear land for grazing beef cattle. This newly cleared land often cannot absorb water easily, thereby increasing runoff and erosion. The loss of the tropical forests is directly linked to global warming and the loss of habitat for many species of birds, insects, and animals.

Beef cattle by-products—for instance, hides, horns, hoofs, intestines, brains— are used in a variety of products. including hair care, clothing, marshmallows, ice cream, gelatin, cement, chalk, chewing gum, makeup, matches, margarine, pet food, and strings for musical instruments and tennis racquets. In 2001, artificial human blood was created from cattle blood.

Mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE) is transmitted when rendered body parts of diseased cattle are fed to other cattle. The human form of the disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, occurs when humans consume meat from undiagnosed, infected cattle. Transmitted through the spinal chord and brain, mad cow disease gets its name because of the damage it inflicts on a cow’s nervous system, causing the animal to act strangely and lose control of his or her ability to function, ultimately killing the animal. Although the disease cannot be spread from animal to animal, or to humans, people can contract Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from eating the meat of diseased animals. Infected humans will experience mood swings, numbness, uncontrollable body movements, and other neurological symptoms—the end result of this disease is always death.

Take Action to Help Cattle                                                      Back to Top

What can you do to change what is happening to cattle? First, stop eating these living, breathing, sentient animals. Selecting a vegetarian/vegan diet is the best way to eliminate the number of cattle being raised for slaughter or for their products on factory farms. Other humane actions include:

• Substitute veggie- and soy-based products for beef, hamburgers, and cows’ milk.
• Substitute synthetic materials for leather.
• Find a vegetarian group in your area and attend a meeting.
• Visit a farm sanctuary and get know the sentient creatures cattle truly are.
• Learn more about factory farming and educate others.
• Support legislation to require stricter regulation and enforcement of animal farming welfare and treatment laws.

June 2009