Cows on the Road, Milk on the Table



Healthy Cow and Calf. Photo: CIWF



Milk has been worrying me a lot recently. And cheese. And yoghurt.

I was driving along the country lanes on my way to pick up my son from the bus stop in the next village (yes, we're very rural here - there is a a bus stop in our village but buses themselves are as rare as hen's teeth) when I found myself behind a herd of cows. They don't walk fast, cows, in fact they don't have any sense of urgency at all, so I had plenty of time to have a good look at them. And frankly, I was appalled.

There were cows which were covered with sores all over their rear ends. Cows with large, unpleasant and very uncomfortable-looking growths on their undersides and hindquarters. Cows whose rears were completely caked in runny excrement. Cows with udders so swollen with milk that they looked as if they might burst, but with so little flesh on their bodies that it looked as if their bones were on the outside of their skin. Cows which could barely walk: several were badly lame in one leg, some were having problems with more than one. They looked unhealthy. They appeared to be in pain. They looked horrific.

Photo: CIWF

Of course I was trailing the slower cows of the herd. Maybe the rest of them were gambolling along at the front, full of the joys of the season, sleek with health and content with their lives. But even if they were, the poor laggers weren't. And it wasn't just a couple of unhealthy cows I saw - there must have been more than a dozen I could see which had something wrong with them.

These were dairy cows. These are the cows that provide the milk that most of us drink every day. How can we live with the fact that our milk might be coming to us as a result of such animal misery?

Compassion in World Farming has highlighted the following areas of concern:

Lameness, Mastitis and Infertility

Milk is heavy and a dairy cow may be carrying several extra kilos of milk in her udders. This can force her hind legs into an unnatural position, making walking difficult, and can result in lameness. It can also make standing and lying down difficult and uncomfortable.

Mastitis is a painful udder infection that is prevalent among dairy cows. In a herd of 100 cows in the UK, there could be as many as 70 cases of mastitis every year on average. Housing cows for long periods can also increase the prevalence of mastitis.

Infertility among high yielding dairy cows is increasing. It has been linked to stress, poor body condition and the demands of high milk production on the cow’s general health.

I could see all of this in the cows I was following. The report goes on to talk about housing and diet. I don't know how these cows were housed, but I suspect that they weren't in green fields all the time, and this was causing some of the issues with lameness in the feet. And as for diet:

The diet of high yielding cows often has relatively little fibrous content and is inappropriate for their type of digestive system. This leads to acidity in the part of the stomach, known as the ‘rumen’. This can lead to acidosis and painful lameness from laminitis.

These cows looked as if their diet wasn't at all suitable for health. A healthy cow will produce healthy cowpats, not be caked in its own excrement.

What Can I Do? What Can You Do?

Buy Organic milk, cheese and other dairy products.  Organic standards require dairy cows to have access to pasture during the grazing season. They require cows to be fed a more natural diet with plenty of roughage. This promotes more sustainable milk yields.

If you can't afford to buy Organic all the time, buy it when you can. Look out for producers that have been awarded the Good Dairy Award for higher welfare in dairy farming. Or products that have the RSPCA's Freedom Food logo. Don't be taken in by the idyllic television ads. Life isn't like that for most cows.

Ask your retailer about the grazing practices of their milk supplier. Even if a supplier is not organic, it can still have the welfare of its animals at the heart of its production. Yarty Valley Dairies, for instance, supplies milk to our local shop, so I can feel confident about popping in for a pint on spec. The farm is not organic, but the welfare standards are high.

Tell your friends and family. People often buy things unthinkingly. Just raise awareness. But don't make them feel guilty. If someone is struggling to make ends meet, as many are in the present economic climate, they are not going to thank you for insisting that cows are more important than feeding their family.

And look at these happy cows, filmed by Compassion in World Farming. Healthy cows, dancing in the fields - something which those cows I saw couldn't even have attempted to do.