WITH all the recent attention to falling dairy prices focused on farmers, let’s not forget that it’s cows who are suffering the most in the dairy industry. Treated by farmers as machines, cows on dairy farms are pushed beyond their physical limits to produce unnaturally high quantities of milk, often causing lameness, physical exhaustion, and a painful udder infection known as mastitis.

A cow mother loves her baby just as we humans love ours, yet hers are summarily dragged away shortly after birth so that the milk nature intended for them can instead be sold for human consumption. Those calves, if male, are deemed useless to the dairy industry and most likely either shot in the head or sold for veal, while the female calves are forced to repeat the same sad life as their mothers.

This cycle of artificial insemination, birth and then grief over the loss of their calves, year in and year out, only ends when the cows’ bodies are spent, and then off they go in a lorry to the abattoir to be strung up and slaughtered.

The dairy trade is ugly and violent, and the sooner it crumbles, the better. Rather than crying over cheap milk, dairy farmers should see the handwriting on the wall and diversify into the dairy-free market, which is booming as consumers increasingly opt for cruelty-free milks made from everything from soya beans and almonds to oats and hemp – all lighter on the gut and the conscience.

Sara Wise, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)