Why I Became A Vegan

What's Cruel About Dairy And Eggs?

So, what's wrong with dairy and eggs? After all, the animals are killed to produce them!

Actually, they are. Not immediately, though. First they endure several years of torture, exploitation, and unspeakable cruelty before their bodies are so worn out that they are slaughtered at only a few years old (I am speaking of factory farms where the majority of store-bought food comes from, not local farms).

Dairy. What's the life of a dairy cow like? Let's start from the beginning. A beautiful baby cow is born. She knows nothing of the world, or the doom that awaits her. All she knows is the warmth of her mother's body. She's born with the instinct to start nursing. Sadly for her, she may never taste her mother's milk. After all, that milk is meant for human consumption, even though it's coming from a cow's body. Within just a few hours or days of her birth, she will be ripped away from her mother. They will never see each other again. She is kept in horrible, cramped conditions. Once she's old enough to produce her own milk, she is artificially inseminated and will give birth to her baby. Her own calf will then be taken from her. She will never see her baby again. If the calf is a female, she will suffer the same fate as her mother. If the calf is a male, he will be sold (males are not of much use to the dairy industry). Many male calves are confined to dark crates and fed a low-iron diet to keep their flesh tender and pale, and will be slaughtered for veal within only a few months. The mother knows none of this. She only knows that her newborn baby is gone, and calls out in desperate search of it. Almost immediately after giving birth and having her calf taken away, she is hooked up to an electric milking machine, two or more times daily. Her body is torn apart as she's forced to produce far more milk than her body would naturally produce. An average dairy cow produces nearly 5x more milk now than she naturally would, thru excessive milkings, genetic selection, and even drugs and growth hormones. When this cycle is over, she will be forcibly impregnated again and the cycle continues. Within only 4-5 years, her overworked body will be worn out and will begin producing less milk. Considered worthless by the dairy industry, she is slaughtered and her body will become ground beef and restaurant hamburgers. She has only lived out a fraction of her natural lifespan, which would be 20-25 years for a healthy cow. Dairy cows do not give their milk willingly; cows produce milk for the same reason humans do: to nourish their young. Not to nourish humans.

Eggs. From the moment a chick enters the world, she is confined to a cramped, dirty, and diseased area with hundreds of other chickens. Most of them are kept in tiny battery cages. The wire in these cages rubs off their feathers, chafes their skin, and causes their feet to become crippled. Male chicks are worthless to the egg industry, and as a result approximately 200 million newly-hatched male chicks are either ground alive or suffocated each year. Female chicks aren't much better off. Shortly after birth they are painfully debeaked and will live a miserable life until they're killed around the age of 2, when normally they would live to be 10-15 years old. Chickens are one of the most genetically altered animals, and have been modified to grow at a rate that is exceptionally faster than they would normally grow. As a result, this causes serious health problems. Their legs have trouble supporting their unnaturally heavy bodies and their underdeveloped heart and lungs often result in congestive heart failure. As another result of this altering, chickens are able to produce up to 300 eggs per year instead of the natural amount of around 10-20, which has devastating effects on their fragile bodies. When the time comes to be slaughtered, the chickens are not stunned. They have their throats slit while they are still conscious, and they are often scalded alive and dragged through electrified water to make their feathers come off easily. Chickens are intelligent animals; they feel pain and fear just as any other living creature.

These are the reasons vegans abstain from dairy and eggs. To some people, having a glass of milk may seem harmless enough, but once you look into where these products are coming from, it's not as harmless as the industry will have you believe. Again, I am speaking of factory farms where the majority of store-bought diary and eggs come from. Later I will discuss the pros-and-cons of farm-fresh animal products.