They just can't win

Last week in Michigan, while carrying cows to the slaughter house, a truck turned over, giving the cows a chance to run for their lives. They did.

Reportedly, they made it over highway guardrails, forcing traffic detours and causing at least one accident. Within a day, seven of the 12 had been rounded up; there was no word then or later about the remaining five.

Here comes the kicker: State Police plan to euthanize them once all the cows are captured. No “compassion release” to a farm. No compassion, period. What more does a cow have to do to avoid the slaughter house, and needless death itself?

Of course, this is not a decision that cows can make. Of course, whoever “owned” the animals wants something to show for having raised them. Of course, of course. . .

It’s simple: Cows – and other animals that humans eat – can’t win. Not until we realize we don’t need meat, we can live nicely without it, and all animals deserve a life too . . . will such ugly stories disappear.
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Yes, we'll have no biogas

Cows and computers, or rather, cow manure and fuel for technology: not quite “perfect together” as New Jersey’s old slogan had it, but at least a symbiotic relationship in the making.

A research paper produced by Hewlett-Packard engineers indicates that dairy farmers could rent out land (for computing centers, increasingly built in rural areas) and power (from their cows’ manure) – thereby addressing two problems in the process.

The average cow reportedly “makes enough waste per day to power a 100-watt light bulb,” according to a NYTimes story earlier this month. If that’s the case, then 10,000 cows could fuel a one-megawatt data center – the equivalent of a small computing center used by a bank.

To do this, the manure must first be turned into something called “biogas,” produced by specialized equipment. Already, some dairy farmers are selling their manure to a shared biogas producer. A cow manure cooperative?

Before this whole thing goes much further, a modest proposal: drink less cow milk, eat less cow meat and raise fewer cows. Those three steps would result in healthier humans and happier cows. (Spent milk-giving cows do go to the slaughter house, you know. And their skin turns up in high fashion handbags and shoes. They don’t give milk and make manure indefinitely.)

And if some computer centers must go begging for power, that’s OK too. We can all use more fresh air.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/technology/19cows.html?emc=eta1)
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The cost o' milk

“Land O’ Lakes” – the name suggests green fields, blue water and occasional farm houses. Bucolic. Clean. Good old days on the farm.

That's so not so.

PETA’s latest “Animal Times” magazine includes an expose-article on a Pennsylvania dairy factory farm that supplies milk to Land O’ Lakes, America’s largest seller of brand-name butter. As detailed in the article, life on the farm is “horrendous” for cows and their calves; industry consultant Dr. Temple Grandin called conditions there “absolutely atrocious.”

The following excerpt tells “Why ‘milk’ is a four-letter word”:

“On dairy farms, cows – who, like humans, carry their babies for nine months – are continuously impregnated in order to produce a steady supply of milk. Calves are torn away from their mothers almost immediately after birth so that humans can drink the milk that nature intended for calves. Male calves are usually sold to veal farms where they’re kept tethered in cramped, dark stalls for 16 to 32 weeks before they’re killed. Female calves are turned into milk machines like their mothers. When their milk production wanes, the cows – considered ‘spent’ by farmers – are hauled off to slaughter.”

PETA has called on Land O’ Lakes to buy milk only from farms that meet its 12-point animal welfare plan (that includes vet visits, stall cleaning and bans on electric shock prods and tail-docking). To date: no known implementation.

You can send a message to Land O’ Lakes through PETA.org. And you can think more about cows and calves in misery with every glass of milk.
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