Most of the grain grown in the US heartland go to feed livestock. That same land could be used to grow food directly for humans–and since studies consistently show that plant-based diets require less land than meat- and dairy- based diets, some of the land could revert back to its natural habitat, giving native wildlife currrently displaced by feedcrops a chance to rebound.
Accordingly, with a transition away from meat and dairy, less fertilizer would be required and there would be less manure washing into the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.
“These beings wanted to be, just as much as I did.”
–Observation made by Dr. Russell K. Elleven on his family’s farm when he was a boy. Dr. Elleven is now minister of Westside Unitarian Universalist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
Dairy cows and their children are nearly always killed young. Some “excess” calves are killed when only days old.
Princeton University researchers concluded that milk may promote breast cancer by the action of the growth factor IGF-1, which has been shown to stimulate the growth of human breast cancer cells in the laboratory (Outwater et al., 1997)
“I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats…. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight.”
—Isaiah 15-16
“I came from a dairy farm and started my career strongly believing in the nutritional value of this food, especially for its protein content. But, in our experiments, we documented multiple times a remarkable ability of the main protein of cow’s milk, casein, to promote cancer growth and to do so by a plethora of mechanisms.”
— Dr. T. Colin Campbell, December 6, 2010
“…without degenerating into cruelty towards that creature?”
—Karen Davis, founder and president of United Poultry Concerns
“[S]hould we not also concern ourselves with how humans exploit the very thing that makes an animal female, that makes an animal a mother?”
— Ari Solomon, writing about dairy cows
“Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.”
— Civil rights activist Dick Gregory
Dairy cows and their children are killed as soon as they’re not economically useful. Almost all are killed young, many are killed as babies.
Sometimes it takes a few tries to get used to a new taste. Taste buds adjust. If you drink or at one time drank cow’s milk, you may have gone through this adjustment when you switched to “two percent” or skim milk. If you try a nondairy milk and you’re undecided on the taste, give it a few more tries and you may find that you start to really like the new taste. After a while, the new taste may become the standard.
Taste buds are quite malleable. This may be the reason that tastes vary so much between cultures.
“Anything that comes from a cow, I don’t eat”
— Fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who is in his nineties and eats a dairy-free, near-vegan diet
In a recent study of over 63,000 Chinese women, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, eating moderate amounts of soy lowered hip fracture rates by up to 36 percent. A previous study showed similar results. Studies do not show such a protective effect from consuming dairy.
Full article: http://tinyurl.com/28wsdjt
Dairy Cow Diary 