Milk is milk Blog by Alex Avery:
The unruly, nasty and just-plain-mean people at PETA (that’s People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and not the parody group People Eating Tasty Animals) have lost a lawsuit in California over what makes a cow happy, and who gets to say so. I have to characterize PETA for who they really are, people-haters, first because… because hold your breath… I sorta agree with them on this one.
I only go so far as to agree that marketing milk by claiming your cows are happy is plain B.S. and it has nothing to do with whether or not PETA believes cows to be unfairly subjugated by humans who steal their milk. However, suggesting some cows are happier than others, at least for the reasons we see in some dairy advertising these days, as a way to sell milk for a higher price is bogus.
Milk from happy cows, by rational economic and production standards, should be cheaper. You see “happy cows” are high-producing cows and the more milk produced per cow means more affordable milk for consumers and higher profits for farmers. Oddly, those making claims about happy cows are most often organic marketers, like Horizon which has trademarked the phrase “happy cow.” Yet research shows organic dairy cows produce 40% less milk than conventional cows. If happy cows produce more milk, then how can cows producing nearly half as much be all that happy?
A few years back I heard one organic dairy company claim that “our cows are sooooo happy, they run out to the pasture to graze after being milked.” This was part of a marketing scheme painting a bucolic picture of a solitary cow gamboling about the fields that had to be thought up on Madison Avenue, because no dairy farmer would tell such a fib. In fact, one of my colleagues asked one of the country’s leading dairy animal scientists Dr. Dale Bauman at Cornell about this claim and it made him laugh. As he explained it, the only way to get a dairy cow to race into a pasture to graze would be if it were starving. That doesn’t sound happy to me.
Cows are herd animals and research shows cows are most contented (there are actually people who monitor animal heart rates and other vitals which can show their stress levels in different situations) when they are with other cows, chewing their cuds or eating feed in the shade of a well-ventilated feed barn. Apparently part of a cow’s natural instincts out in an open field away from the protections of a well-designed feeding space and their other cow pals (i.e., the herd) is to fear predators. This results in stress which can negatively impact milk production.
A happy or rather a “contented cow” does produce more milk. How do you make a cow contented? First by milking it (something PETA doesn’t want us to do at all), and milking it often. Three times a day milking is one great way to make a cow happy. Think about it, if you were filled with 50+ pounds of liquid wouldn’t you want relief more than once or twice a day? A healthy, well-fed cow, free from stress and heat is going to make for a contented cow.
There are lots of other ways to make a cow contented, and thus become a long-lived, high-producer. This is what would make me happy if I were a cow. The more productive I was over a nice long life would keep me away from my second career - can you say Big Mac? What the people marketing “happy cows,” like Horizon, won’t tell you, is their “cull rate.” That’s because most research shows little or no difference in the ages of organic or conventional cows culled (put out to that final pasture, so to speak) when they are no longer economically productive milk producers.
Here at the Center for Global Food Issues, we have developed a certification program to help dairy farmers generate higher yields while conserving more land and resources for nature. Unlike organic, free-range, humane-farmed or other similar marketing seals of approval - our Earth-Friendly/Farm Friendly certification program is based solely on science-proven methods that help farmers produce more while using less. And, adopting some of our recommended practices can help keep cows productive longer (read alive and away from the butcher shop) which should make for happier cows overall. We call it high-yield conservation, and it has the support of Nobel Prize winners, environmentalists and leading political figures around the world.
While working with dairies to adopt standards which would help them generate high yields while protecting scarce natural resources - we like to say, “growing more per acre, leaves more room for nature” - I had the pleasure of visiting a dairy farm in Indiana that is an excellent model for those looking for contented cows. Fair Oaks Dairy, which also offers a great tour and learning experience for school children, is a model of efficiency, animal care and productivity. As a result, they have some really happy cows. But you don’t see them trying to compete for business by trashing their competitors with claims that their animals are any happier or that their milk is somehow different. They are just trying to be the best dairy farmers they can be, using the best tools and technology and taking care of their most important resources - their healthy, happy cows. That’s what most dairy farmers care about, doing a good job and treating their cows well.
While the California “Happy Cow” campaign is relatively harmless, there are some who seek to use animal-welfare and related claims to sell higher-priced milk. Others, like PETA, want to stop animal agriculture all together. Misleading advertising, labels and marketing campaigns suggesting the milk comes from happier cows may make you feel better about paying high prices, but your purchase is probably harming a decent, hard-working, honest dairy producer somewhere with happy cows who doesn’t go around smearing his competitors. Ethical and responsible marketing of dairy products means not misleading consumers about the realities of farming and animal science. Milk is milk.