No, you can’t drink cow’s milk with a clear conscience

from Ecorazzi:

The NZ Farmer side of Stuff wants to clear your conscience so you can go on drinking cow’s milk. Careful, it could make you choke on your almond milk.

Jon Morgan took to penning an opinion piece that reads like a 1950’s ad for milk, without the flashy use of logic or facts to distract people into thinking there’s any value in it. Morgan begins by shunning the “eyewash spouted by the anti-farming brigade,” a favourable comparison as better vision is exactly what those again cow’s milk are after. I wouldn’t call myself anti-farmer though, I’d just prefer all farmers switch over to making a living off of, oh I dunno, asparagus and not living beings.

Morgan loses all credibility immediately by loosely assuring readers milk isn’t bad for you and that all the substitutes on the market are in another “league.” That grade school style low-blow doesn’t amount to much without anything to back it up, since repeating “complete protein source” and sticking your fingers in your ears when someone tries to bring up fecal coliforms, calcium-leaching, or increased risks of fatal cancer doesn’t count as facts. Again, it’s like we’ve time travelled to back before we had a world wide web full of information and are relying on the upright fist of a bully to teach us all we need to know.

Naturally, the next defence is the importance of dairy on the economy. He claims no one in their right mind (not so hidden ‘crazy vegans’ reference) would want to see the 5-6 percent that dairy contributes to the economy (another unsupported statistic) drop, and then claims dairy is a “wealth creation system that sees anyone prepared to study and work hard become a millionaire in their 30s, even earlier in some cases.” It’s so good to know some choice individuals, thanks to bank subsidies and a very dairy-happy Government, can get rich at the expense of cows, the planet, and the health of their customers. It’s amazing we don’t see more tractors with gold rims.

But uh oh, even Morgan can’t ignore the obvious environmental and ethical problems with dairy farming. He has a simple solution though; ride the wave of controversy out because it’s bound to die down. He advises farmers avoid PR disasters by reducing their cows in an effort to decrease waste and/or participate in “bobby calf adoption schemes” to, well, pretend they’re saving some cows. By decreasing the amount of dead calves and preserving a small patch of grass, surely all the vegan advocates will shut their mouths, and only open them again to suck back a refreshing glass of milk. We’ve officially slipped into Morgan’s deepest fantasies.

The blatant undertones of right-leaning propaganda in this piece could only be topped by a conclusion that screamed “also, don’t you guys think soy milk and liberals are so gross?” But with Fonterra’s support of NZ Farmer and their glorious pieces of sensationalism, name calling could have been a step too far, maybe.

If someone like Jon Morgan can recognize that there are “flies in milk,” it’s time for everyone to take the appropriate action against it’s continuing production by going vegan. Cows need the wide open eyes of those who are no longer able to turn off their conscience long enough to choke back the corrupt secretions being marketed to us. Sorry Morgan, challenging people to digest the misinformation and bullying of the dairy industry is a thing of the past. The world does not need cow’s milk as you suggest, it needs vegans.