31–40 of 72 posts
I appreciate the raw milk warning in there. Raw milk kills people ever year. It gets lost in the flood of dairy marketing.
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Thank you. I was a little bit disappointed that these more sinister parts were occluded but I guess that is to be expected after all, the dairy industry spends insane amounts of money to keep us gaslighted. Just ask somebody if cows give milk without being pregnant... Let's also not forget that the article basically skips what rennet actually is just naming it an enzyme.
> Just ask somebody if cows give milk without being pregnant Is that... controversial? Obviously a cow normally gives milk without being pregnant. It wouldn't be able to feed its calf otherwise.
I think a lot of people don't realize we're hijacking their reproductive systems, instead assuming cows constantly produce milk.
One could argue there's more suffering in a glass of milk than a steak, which makes ethical vegetarianism flawed despite its good intentions.
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It absolutely is. Toned homogenised milk is just a thin watery gruel colored white. For me Half'nHalf is about the right consistency but you can't get it unhomogenized. That said, cannot not post this mandatory calvin and hobbes strip https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT3Qdxv...
Half and Half is too much cream for most people. I've met someone who drank it constantly, but she was a former New York City Ballet dancer, with a very high metabolic rate, struggling to keep her weight up. Milk mixes from all-cream to no-cream are available, after all.
A sidenote about unhomogenized milk, it's delicious. I don't know if it actually tastes any different, but something about shaking it up before using it just makes it feel different.
This should have included the insemination and slaughter as well. That cow didn't come from nowhere.
e.g. to get the cow to make milk you have to get it pregnant and thus you get an unwanted calf.
That said, if you don't want the calf, there's almost always going to be someone that does. We'd raise and then butcher the male calves from our milking cows. (We did milk the cows for commercial purposes).
We buy 1L bottles of fresh whole milk from the local dairy, and there is always a thick layer of cream on the top, unlike store-bought whole milk that seems to be missing the cream.
The article itself is informative... But the diagrams, the low contrast on the web page, the font sizes, even some of the writing sounds...umm... AI-driven I'm not complaining about the use of (AI) tools per se, which is fine I guess. Something feels off. Somewhere between a little-off to a bit-more-off. Sorry. I'm trying to find the right words... Perhaps a bit too polished? (Can there be such a thing?)
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Thank you. I was a little bit disappointed that these more sinister parts were occluded but I guess that is to be expected after all, the dairy industry spends insane amounts of money to keep us gaslighted. Just ask somebody if cows give milk without being pregnant... Let's also not forget that the article basically skips what rennet actually is just naming it an enzyme.
> Just ask somebody if cows give milk without being pregnant Is that... controversial? Obviously a cow normally gives milk without being pregnant. It wouldn't be able to feed its calf otherwise.
But there's so much to the linguistics of animal husbandry and dairy that many folks don't know. It goes way deeper than just the milk-oriented terms in the article: Heifer versus cow, freshening and calving, steer versus ox versus bull, AI (not the LLM kind) versus natural service, the barn, parlor, and pasture, and more. Plus plenty of technical knowledge. If you're not hand milking, how many mmHg of negative pressure should you use? Do you use a surcingle, or a claw, or a robot?
Even in the milk-oriented terms, there are others not covered by the article. HTST and UHT aren't the only options, there's also LTLT. Pasteurization can be done in a pipeline, or in a vat. Smaller vats for home and small farm usage can be multi-purpose: I pasteurized milk and cultured yogurt in mine. Some folks even care about the specific proteins (A1 beta-casein versus A2), which is genetically determined by the cow (and can be bred for).
I got a cow in 2020 and there was a lot to learn.
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> Just ask somebody if cows give milk without being pregnant Is that... controversial? Obviously a cow normally gives milk without being pregnant. It wouldn't be able to feed its calf otherwise.
I don't think people are kept abreast of the realities of animal farming in general. Cows simply produce milk like chickens lay eggs. Consider how imagery of a farmer inseminating a cow with his arm disappearing up some tract or fitting a spike to the baby so it can't drink its mom's milk -- or farm conditions in general -- are basically shock footage that people are insulated from until they maybe chance upon a movi…
The gestation period of a cow is approximately 9 months, similar to humans, by coincidence. Only a cow that has given birth to a calf will produce milk. The normal lactation period is 305 days before the cow is "dried up" before giving birth again. 10,000 pounds of milk is considered a good lactation total. Typically, cows are bred to calve once per year. Typically going through 10 lactations before that one way trip to MacDonald's.
Dairy bulls are notoriously nasty creatures, so artificial insemination is almost universal in the dairy industry. The "tract" that you speak of is the cow's colon. The technician is careful to guide the pipette so as not to injure the animal, and the colon provides convenient access to feel what is going on inside.
If you are squeamish about such things as cow's colons, then vet school is not for you.
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> Just ask somebody if cows give milk without being pregnant Is that... controversial? Obviously a cow normally gives milk without being pregnant. It wouldn't be able to feed its calf otherwise.
I don't think people are kept abreast of the realities of animal farming in general. Cows simply produce milk like chickens lay eggs. Consider how imagery of a farmer inseminating a cow with his arm disappearing up some tract or fitting a spike to the baby so it can't drink its mom's milk -- or farm conditions in general -- are basically shock footage that people are insulated from until they maybe chance upon a movi…
These are not sapient beings that are capable of looking out for their own well-being. We've bred that out of them over hundreds of human generations.