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Imagine the dairy sell in ‘23

Flip Grater Musician, author and co-founder of Christchurch bistro and wine bar Grater Goods

It was Mother’s Day recently, so of course I was thinking about cows, the hardestworking, most brutally treated mothers in this country. Now, I love my cognitive dissonance as much as the next person, but any member of the lactating sex who continues to drink cows’ milk after giving birth astounds me. A major blind spot in modern feminism is the failure to protect exploited females of other species.

I invite you to think about what the dairy industry actually is for a second. Just a second. Then you can get back to your latte.

Cows are kept pregnant in order to keep lactating. Then their calves are taken away from them. (It’s widely reported that both calf and mother cry out for each other when separated, visibly traumatised, and that mothers grieve for days afterwards, bellowing in distress.)

The mother is then attached to pumps and milked until the cycle begins again. It’s truly Handmaid’s Tale-level horror. Our cows are living in Gilead. And we support this by buying dairy products, even when perfectly great substitutes exist, and failing to implement effective legislation.

It’s worth noting that humans are the only mammals who drink breast milk after weaning – let alone from another species. And that whatever nutritional benefits you think you’re getting from milk are unnecessary in that form because from the time you were weaned you’ve been eating solids. You know, grown-up food. And there is plenty of calcium and other nutrients available in solid food form.

If you have a cow out the back and want to jump on its teat, have at it. It’s still gross, but you’re not the problem. The problem is that any time animals are used in large industry, the need to drive profits will always come ahead of animal welfare or environmental concerns.

But what about the economy, you ask. Well, good news – profit and principle can and increasingly do co-exist. The conversion of dairy pasture to arable land is possible and indeed well underway.

In Canterbury, start-ups like Leaft are working to literally change the landscape of the region by working with farmers to adopt plant protein crops. Companies like mine (Grater Goods), Savour and Angel Food are producing incredibly good non-dairy cheeses. South Island oat milk company Otis is creating huge opportunities for oat crops and The Brothers Green are helping farmers convert to hemp.

Yes, dairy is still cheaper than alternatives and we’re all mindful of putting kai in our puku as affordably as possible in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. But the only reason dairy (and meat) are so cheap is because they’re not priced in accordance with their actual cost. We don’t value our land or our rivers. We don’t value our animals.

The price of alternatives is slowly becoming comparable with their traditional counterparts due to the volume of sales going up, but we also need to see a rise in the price of animal products to reflect accurately the long-term costs to our country.

Step out of our current reality, forget our Trumpet-loving milk chocoholic history for a second. Imagine if dairy emerged now as a new industry. Imagine the sell. Imagine the pitch decks and ad campaigns. This new industry would include the challenges of keeping animals pregnant, breaking the mother-child bond and killing 2 million bobby calves a year as a waste product.

Imagine it was reported that this industry would increase our carbon emissions by 33% and destroy our rivers. The overwhelming reaction would be: why would we create something with that number of environmental overheads for products we can make using oats?

Yet dairy thrives. We are boiled frogs. Not only do we support this industry, but we proudly promote it to the world as part of our 100% pure greenwashing campaign while it continues to handmaid our cows and destroy our planet.

Some 97% of NZ’s dairy is exported . Huge profits go to the industry while the price is ultimately paid by everyday New Zealanders, our cows, our waterways and our land.

The ability to talk publicly about the environment has changed a lot over the years. It’s moved from a fringe greenie concern to mainstream conversation. I’m yet to see that shift in relation to animal welfare.

So I’m aware it’s still intensely uncool and somehow controversial to announce aloud that one doesn’t want to see animals harmed for the sake of our enjoyment or lifestyle choices (and yes, consuming animal products is as much a lifestyle choice as veganism is).

Despite the fact we all feel compassion for animals there is still such a weird disconnect among consumers who happily buy products that exploit and harm animals while also buying increasingly bougie gourmet food/ toys/beds/jewellery for their pets.

But here I am, leaning into this uncool topic because I can, and our cows can’t.

A belated happy Mother’s Day to the cows of Aotearoa. Now, go enjoy your latte.

Opinion

en-nz

2023-05-29T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-05-29T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281668259352410

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