[Pfhreak]

> This is a dairy farm, so it should not be expected to abide by the ethics of vegan people.

No one said it should. What the parent poster said were that there were significant things not said by the article. For the folks who care about animal welfare (especially as a purchasing factor), knowing what the farm does in totality is important.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

I don't disagree with you. The farm should be upfront about what exactly it does with the cattle once they're weaned. If they are butchered on the grounds, they should show how they do that. If they hand them off to someone else, they should probably say a few words about how they are sure the animals are treated no worse than needed on the way to, and during, slaughter.

I think that, counter-intuitively, the squeamishness about this part of eating animals (i.e. their killing) is responsible for a large part of people being at least uncomfortable with, if not completely opposed to the very idea (of eating other animals).

In any case, we kill animals to eat them and there is nothing good that can come out of trying to obscure this simple fact.

Btw, I think that "ethical dairy" is a silly name. I was just curious about the idea of leaving the calves with their mothers and milking the mothers only once a day etc.

[tomcam]

I am not overly fond of euphemisms, but why is “ethical dairy“ not a useful term here? They really seem to be making the animals’ lives better.

[codebolt]

I agree. Vegans are usually 'all or nothing' when it comes to animal welfare. However, if you could increase the quality of life of farm animals from miserable to decent for the majority of their lifespans, that would surely eliminate the majority of animal suffering overall. I don't get why someone who claims to be concerned about animal welfare wouldn't promote such efforts.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

I find it a bit silly because "ethical" is a vague term that can be interpreted in many different ways. For instance, some people will still not think that the dairy's practices are "ethical", if the end result is the same, i.e. slaughtering the animals.

[neltnerb]

I'm confused as to how this would be ambiguous. If an animal is born in captivity it will probably be killed for meat at some point, that's just math...

I am pretty sure they're just saying that after 6 months they aren't suckling anyway and are grassfed through being a yearling until they're adults. Few farms will talk about killing their animals, of course, keeping what is happening sterile in appearance is pretty important for keeping the amount people eat high.

I hope none of that is controversial, it can always be assumed that animals born on a farm ultimately are eaten as meat... I'm a vegetarian and I'm not thrilled about it, but that's just math =/

[vzidex]

> Few farms will talk about killing their animals, of course, keeping what is happening sterile in appearance is pretty important for keeping the amount people eat high

That's exactly what I was trying to point out. Animal product industries have so many different ways in which they're cruel to animals - e.g., for dairy, the things I pointed out that are missing from the posted webpage - that individual companies can try to make themselves look better/ethical by pointing out the one or two things they're doing better than average, while omitting all of the other horrific parts of the pipeline (as another poster in this thread said, "ethics-washing").