Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls • Hacker News Board

Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls

#171

Post by netcan » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:04 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #63

This is large scale Matrix-like exploitation at its finest like only humans can do. Copying the genes of a single animal hundreds of thousands of times, killing the males at birth, plugging the females to a milking machine, feed them corn and soy which is totally not their natural diet and injecting them with tons of antibiotics, hormones and god knows what else. I wonder what could possibly go wrong? All completely…

Necessary/unnecessary, when it comes to food matkets, is a problematic way of thinking. It's ultimately preference, not necessity driven and our food culture is very complex.

Completely necessity driven (calories, nutrients and such)... the food market could be much tinier than it is today. We'd be getting our animal proteins from insects, our fresh vegetables from a small collection of locally efficient species, etc.

Dairy is a long tradition in a lot of places, and an important (culturally, but also nutritionally in-context) food. So is beef. So are spices. Increasingly, things like almond milk and avocados, for newer cultural movements.

Sure, dairy is not necessary. Neither are avocados. People like them though.

In any case, long history and tradition of cattle. The "matrix" problem is mostly a problem of agricultural policy, corporat farming and technology.

I live in Ireland. We have a big dairy industry. Cows eat mostly grass and live mostly in fields. Antibiotics are for sick cows. The medium sized farmers are still strong and I feel fine about the ethics of dairy, at least from an animal welfare perspective.

There a newer reasons for change. It might be a good idea to plant forest, instead of grassy fields and to be concerned about atmospheric methane. That said, if we are to reforest, we might use the forest to farm pigs the old fashioned way. Pigs are factory farmed, and animal welfare is a problem.

Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls

#172

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #136

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We evolved to do it recently, but lactose tolerance genes have been heavily selected for by evolution. It's one of the most heavily selected-for traits in the past ten thousand years.

Still the majority of the world population is lactose intolerant and should not be consuming dairy at all. The ones that can digest it, do it usually less well than they think they do. Mild chronic diarrhea is prevalent is western countries, and a degree of dairy intolerance could very well be one of the factors. It gets worse for most people with age, as elderly people can become lactose intolerant, fully or only sl…

There are different degrees of lactose tolerance, and a good fraction of the world's population is at least somewhat tolerant. Then there are regions of the world where almost all people are completely tolerant, like northern Europe.

There are also lots of dairy products that contain little lactose, from lactose-free milk to cheese. And of course, it's pretty simple to just take lactase pills.

From a completely subjective perspective, dairy products are some of the tastiest foods, and they're objectively a huge part of food culture in Europe. I don't foresee them going away.

Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls

#173

Post by meschi » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #87

leadingthenet wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to have to pry my homemade kefir from my cold, dead hands!

There's water kefir, which can be made without milk.

But it basically only shares the name.

Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls

#174

Post by vfc1 » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

aphextim wrote: post #160

vfc1 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There exists whole industry of keeping cows and producing diary in humane way. These are usually market gimmicks. They say a cow is pastured raised if they leave it out an hour a day, grass-fed if it gets fed half the diet in grass the other in grains, etc. The costs of raising cattle and producing dairy in that way would simply not allow to meet the demand and it will never happen. Factory farms are the reality of…

I always get my dairy local. Where I live I am lucky enough to have a family farm that services our area. The nice thing is that their milk isn't that much more than any of the name brands. Maybe 50 cents a gallon. You can tour their farms and watch the process and they are very open about it. http://debackerfamilydairy.com/ If we had more of these local farms servicing more areas it would definitely help reduce reli…

When I saw your post I thought it would a Mom and Pa farm down the road with 5 cows, but this actually looks like a small (to medium?) size factory farm to me, well marketed.

Those huge structures are I imagine grain silos to store feed -https://www.google.com/search?q=de+backer+family+dairy&rlz=1...:

How many cows do they have? Apparently farms with more than 100 cows make up just 0.3 percent of the total dairy farm population.

You can clearly see that it's a factory-like installation. Are all those people part of the family or full-time employees? I bet several are employees.

At least it does not come from across the world it's local so less impactful.

> use to make the richest ice cream that you’ll ever taste.

The other day I tried one of those plant-based Magnum ice creams, I couldn't tell the difference and actually liked it more.

Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls

#175

Post by SuoDuanDao » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

spion wrote: post #162

yboris wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it yourself: > people choose the cheapest product the cows be damned. When vfc1 says "One thing implies the other", the charitable interpretation of that statement is likely "given the way our society is structured at this time, it's inevitable that this result will obtain". When taking care of cows means spending more money on their welfare than some competitor, and when people are willingly disinterested i…

This doesn't help actually fix the problem, because you have equivalent problems with irresponsible production of plant based food (soil erosion, destruction of entire ecosystems and replacing them with plant fields and so on). If we keep attacking the problem from the wrong angle, we won't ever have a good solution.

agree 100%. I don't know of any truly sustainable farms that don't involve some nonhuman animals in the value chain. The problem is not that industrial farming is less efficient when incorporating animals, it's that we're calculating efficiency in terms of fossil fuels in > Calories out.

There are all sorts of alternatives to that paradigm, but none allow us to compare a single metric for both. The nature of the debate reminds me of the apocryphal drunk, looking for his car keys below the streetlamp even though he knows he didn't lose them there.

Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls

#176

Post by irrational » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #63

This is large scale Matrix-like exploitation at its finest like only humans can do. Copying the genes of a single animal hundreds of thousands of times, killing the males at birth, plugging the females to a milking machine, feed them corn and soy which is totally not their natural diet and injecting them with tons of antibiotics, hormones and god knows what else. I wonder what could possibly go wrong? All completely…

But what will I put on my Lucky Charms if we don't have milk?

Seriously, the worst thing for me about doing away with milk/cream/etc. would be having to get all new recipes. Especially for baking. Milk is in so very many recipes and you can't just switch it out for soy milk or almond milk.

Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls

#177

Post by SuoDuanDao » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:21 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #159

herml6987 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Dairy actually has hormones called caso-morphines that bind to the same brain receptors as I believe heroine (of course not as potent). So it's addictive in nature So is the following plant-based foods Gluten exorphin (from gluten found in cereals wheat, rye, barley) Gliadorphin/gluteomorphin (from gluten found in cereals wheat, rye, barley) Soymorphin-5 (from soybean) Rubiscolin (from spinach) https://en.wikipedia.…

And what about relative amounts? I would expect it to be more concentrated in cow's milk than in plants. It's usually the dosis that makes the poison so it would be interesting to know the amounts and its effects in humans. I have a hard time thinking that wheat and barley are that addictive, cheese however I can see it as being quite addictive.

>I have a hard time thinking that wheat and barley are that addictive

Suggest to a few people that their inability to lose weight could be due to a low-grade gluten intolerance, and I predict you'll start to believe it fairly quickly. I try not to evangelize anyway, but dang people get defensive around their carbs.

Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls

#178

Post by vonmoltke » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:23 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #169

spion wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't help actually fix the problem, because you have equivalent problems with irresponsible production of plant based food (soil erosion, destruction of entire ecosystems and replacing them with plant fields and so on). If we keep attacking the problem from the wrong angle, we won't ever have a good solution.

> irresponsible production of plant based food (soil erosion, destruction of entire ecosystems and replacing them with plant fields In most cases, this is actually done to create feed crops like soy and corn. Most of the agricultural fields in the world are used to feed animals either used for slaughter or for dairy and not to feed people directly. Feeding the same amount of people directly instead of feeding animals…

> In most cases, this is actually done to create feed crops like soy and corn.

Soy and corn, particularly corn, have many uses beyond animal feed.

> Most of the agricultural fields in the world are used to feed animals either used for slaughter or for dairy and not to feed people directly.

Please support that statement.

Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls

#179

Post by gsich » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #69

londons_explore wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its also pretty similar to human milk, which has evolved to be a close-to-perfect source of nutrition.

For babies, not for adults. Adult animals in most species can't even drink milk, they can't digest it anymore past infancy. Biologically this means that the infant would release the mother so that they could have another child, so there is biological adaption on most species to not drink milk past a certain age. And we have it too via lactose intolerance, which is normal. However, some relatively small percentage of…

>And we have it too via lactose intolerance, which is normal.

Globally seen yes. Locally it depends. Living in i.e Europe and having lactose intolerance is not normal.

Re: Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls

#180

Post by piffey » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:30 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #152

throwawaygkdpvp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regularly order locally-produced milk from very small scale farmers that don't use any of the things you mention and it's nearly not the cost of a luxury item. I live in a huge city, too. So something must be off in what you're saying. I don't know why you show such certainty of tone, are you a specialist?

> I regularly order locally-produced milk from very small scale farmers Not a specialist here, but I think I'm generally well informed and just trying to use some common sense. You probably pay a bit more for that milk than at the supermarket, right? Most people in your country don't do what you do, they buy it at the supermarket. The dairy products at the supermarket simply don't come from those farms. Do you think…

> Still, in the end, the economic incentives for that farmer to produce more milk are the same. The farmer would be incentivized to use better milk yielding cows, get rid of the males, feed the cheapest possible food to the animals.

American here, but I feel like this has to be a very American ideal. Scandinavian countries have this idea of Lagom which is a sort of balance that's right for everything. Italians have this idea of high quality ingredients nurtured in the best way. French have this idea of doing things the exact old way and protecting that. Sure there are places in those societies still for factory farming, but the ethos that profit must rise above all reasoning is something I only see in my culture.