Our friends at Mercy for Animals are at it again with another undercover investigation showing unfathomable cruelty. This time, they went for the milk industry, targeting New York’s largest dairy operation- Willet Dairy.

The video shows the terrifying conditions dairy cows face, including having their tails and horns cut off, having their babies stolen from them at birth, being crammed into quarters so small they can not turn around, and receiving wounds so swollen and infected that they result in the cows’ deaths. At one point, a worker brags about the injuries he inflicts on cows, including kicking their genitalia. His speech is too laden with profanity to quote here, so be careful if listening on non-private speakers.

The industry continues to call these abuses “isolated incidences,” with the CEO of Willet claiming that the business “ensures [the cows’] lives are good while they’re here.” And while Mercy for Animals concluded their video with a call to adopt a vegan diet by visiting their website www.ChooseVeg.org, the mainstream media continues to water down the issue by merely using the video to campaign for an end to tail docking.

What the media is refusing to acknowledge, again and again, is that practices such as taking calves from their mothers within days of birth are inherent to the dairy industry, and won’t go away even on regulated free-range farms. The only way to end all of these practices is to stop consuming dairy products.

FARM commends Mercy for Animals on their outstanding work, and encourages all who were affected by the video to order a Free Vegan Starter Guide at www.VegKit.org

With the United Nations’ 2006 scathing report on animal agriculture, and the recent WorldWatch Magazine article purporting that raising animals for food contributes more than 50% of all greenhouse gases, one would think that the book would be closed on the issue. Unfortunately, we’re not even close to having the last word.

Time Magazine recently posted an error-ridden article entitled “How Cows (Grass-Fed Only) Could Save the Planet.” The fallacies are too numerous to bother detailing, I have already addressed many of them in the past. But let us always resist the baffling logic that says “if grass-fed beef is better for the earth than grain-fed beef, then it must be helping the environment.” If punching someone hurts less than stabbing them, is it helping them heal?

Worse than the Time Magazine article was a story earlier in the week, from an environmental news site, blindly praising Niman Ranch for its supposed sustainability and animal welfare standards. Considering that the cows are still killed in the end, and that the methane that ALL cows emit far outweighs the environmental impact of the fuels, fertilizers, and feed for the cows, there is really no way a cow could be raised to “high welfare standards” or “sustainably.”

Every grass-fed “miracle” story emphasizes that cows can actually help sequester carbon by helping grass grow. But they conveniently leave out or downplay the fact that grass-fed cows emit significantly more methane than grain-fed cows (not that grain-fed cows don’t contribute to a host of other environmental problems), and methane is about 75 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a twenty year period. Additionally, these stories all compare raising grass-fed cows to either raising grain-fed cows (omitting the option to just not eat meat at all!), or to growing vast amounts of monocrops for vegetarians (omitting the fact that most monocrops in the US are grown to feed cows!).

Even if raising grass-fed cows is slightly better for the environment than grain-fed cows (and that is debatable), a vegan world is not only possible, but high preferable. It would be more sustainable, would not raise any animals to be killed, and would more easily nourish the entire earth’s population. Why strive for mediocrity when we can work for total compassion?