A new investigation reveals the cruel fate of calves in the dairy industry

A new investigation documented by Animal Equality's investigative team in Mexico shows how millions of calves separated from their mothers soon after birth are mistreated by the dairy industry.

Worldwide produce milk it means depriving calves of their mothers' nourishment and seriously injuring them to encourage their exploitation.

As our investigation reveals, male calves are killed when they are still puppies because they cannot produce milk and their breed is little used by the dairy industry meat.A no less cruel fate also befalls the calves:mutilated without anesthesia so as not to develop horns, these young animals are then used to replace them cows who, exhausted by continuous cycles of forced pregnancies, are no longer able to produce milk.

Several studies, including one published by British Columbia University, have shown that dehorning, in addition to causing acute stress and prolonged suffering, has a profoundly negative impact on the cognitive processes of these puppies.If the wound becomes infected, this practice can also have long-term negative consequences, while if the mutilation is not cauterized properly, it can cause serious bleeding.

The life expectancy of a cow in the wild is approximately twenty years, but in the dairy industry these animals are killed three or four years after birth, when they are no longer considered productive.Milk production requires cows to be impregnated regularly so that the calves can be removed and their milk used for human consumption.But these cycles of constant exploitation they quickly exhaust the young cows, who are often victims of diseases and infections.

Between the most common diseases from which a reared cow can suffer we find:

• the'metabolic starvation, which occurs when a cow cannot consume enough food to keep up with the physical exertions required and therefore must draw on its own body reserves;
• there mastitis, an infection of the udder resulting from continuous milking that causes the discharge of pus;
• there lameness, caused by the unnatural conditions in which cows are raised.

In Italy almost 13 million tons of milk are produced. According to Eurostat data, ours Village it is among the top four European states where it produces the most, but this means that 2.8 million cows come forced into forced pregnancies every year to allow milk production, with serious repercussions on their health.

It is also estimated that in Italy 4.5 percent of cows are killed every year while they are still pregnant:it's almost 130 thousand cows, a figure that exceeds the European average.These and other violence to which they are subjected, including the brutal removal from their puppies and the conditions of confinement they suffer throughout their lives, reveal an unsustainable production mechanism to the detriment of intelligent and sensitive animals.
Instead, choose drinks vegetables milk alternatives can help reduce the suffering of cows and calves, reducing funding against a production system that condemns these animals to be exploited like machines.