California Cows Are Tortured Cows

According to ads for the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB), “Great Cheese comes from Happy Cows. Happy Cows come from California.” To back up this fantasy, the ads show a couple of bulls or a few cows lolling about happily on lush green pastures. The problem: For the vast majority of California dairy cows, these ads are pure fiction.

Consumers are misled into thinking cows in the dairy industry are well treated when, in fact, most of California’s dairy cows live anything but easy lives. They are kept in feces- and urine-saturated, completely treeless, grassless, “dry-lots” of dirt (mud, during parts of the year); artificially inseminated as often as possible; attached to milking machines nearly every day of their lives (including throughout their pregnancies); have their beloved calves (shown in the ads talking about the bliss of their lives to their grandmothers!) taken away to be turned into veal; and, when their worn bodies can no longer meet the inordinately high production demands of the industry, they are trucked in all weather conditions to the slaughterhouse to be strung up by one leg and have their throats slit. Happy cows?!