ARTICLE 7 - MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS: VEGETABLE SOUP FOR THE SOUL (A Vegan Way of Life)
from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Billie Touchstone Signer

The Milk of Human Kindness. What does that mean anyway? To me, it means the warmth of kindness excreted from humans. The most, the best, the ultimate in kindness? Maybe. But maybe not.

Milk can be defined as any white-like liquid excreted from animal or plant matter. Ever hear farmers say, “How much milk does your cow give?” NOT! The cow didn’t GIVE any milk. It was taken from the cow by force. The milk was intended for her baby. A more accurate question would be, “How much milk do you take from your cow daily?” No human kindness there.

Dairying is one of many exploitive businesses that cause untold pain and suffering. Behind the scenes activities of dairying have been tolerated so long, that now nobody seems to notice or mind. Got milk? This is a shrewd travesty of the dairy industry that is definitely a brainwashing technique for America.

The average urban man or woman hasn’t a clue of how the snow white milk arrived in the dairy case, along with butter, cheeses, ice cream, yogurt and more. Like the stork story bringing babies, children were and are sometimes told that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. I think for the most part that people just don’t want to know how the milk gets to their table. But allow me to build a glass house around the dairy industry:

Betsy is a black and white Holstein dairy cow. She doesn’t remember her mother at all. How could she? She was taken from her soon after birth and placed in a cold, damp stall. A hard nipple from a machine was crammed into her mouth. It was as close to having a mother, as she would ever know.

She was placed in a pasture with other motherless orphaned calves also fed with the milk machines. She saw adult cows in another pasture and wondered if one of them was her mother. She felt very lonely and afraid. She wanted her mother.

But at least she was grateful not to be born a male calf. Their fate was even worse than hers. Other than those males raised for “prime” beef and a select few to be raised for breeding purposes, bull calves are crammed into wooden cages too small to turn around in and barely big enough to lie down in it’s own excrement and urine. It is fed a substance without iron so it’s meat would remain pale and tender. It would have no kind of life at all because in a few weeks, it would be slaughtered for veal.

Betsy lived in a small pasture with other orphaned calves until she was old enough to breed and produce milk for the dairy farmer. In all likelihood she was bred artificially. Semen is taken from bulls and injected into the cows unnaturally. Her only halfway decent life would be from the time she was bred and lived in a pasture with other heifers (female cows that have not yet calved) until her first calf was born.

Her baby would be snatched away just as she had been. The baby she had carried inside her for nine months would never know her and she would never know motherhood.

Once she had a calf, she would be bred right away again. No time to rest up or have any kind of life now. She was a milk machine, a utility, and a slave of the worst sort.

Betsy was fed artificially fertilized feeds laced with antibiotics, hormones and many kinds of drugs to keep her lactating longer and longer. Once her body no longer responded to the drugs after a few years, she would be sold for hamburger. If a cow is allowed to calve naturally, she will only have a calf every year or so and live to be twenty years old or more if treated “with the milk of human kindness.”

But not in a dairy. Ever been inside a dairy at milking time? I have and the sights and smell turned my stomach. The poor cows are chained to the wall with machines suctioned to their teats. Their large pleading eyes looked about hopelessly. The milking machine often causes cuts and bruises of the worst kind.

The milk goes into huge vats. I could see blood, pus and debris floating around in the huge vats of milk. I asked if that filth would be removed before it went to the processing plant. I was told that processing the milk would make it sterile and pure. Pure? Why didn’t I believe them?

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), that great organization mentioned in an earlier article states:

“ A major research study published in Pediatrics in 2000 showed that getting extra calcium—from milk or anything else—doesn't make any difference at all in bone density. And evidence shows that dairy product consumption contributes to obesity, ear infections, constipation, respiratory problems, heart disease, and some cancers. For strong bones, kids need exercise, sunlight, and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. And there's healthy calcium in fortified juices, soymilk, greens, beans, and many other foods that avoid milk's problems.”

So what’s the deal here? Why doesn’t our government publish findings such as these so that America and the world can be informed of the truth about milk and discount all the lies we’ve swallowed because we trusted the Food and Drug Administration? Why? Because the Dairy Industry has a powerful lobby and does not allow the truth to be told. America has been well brainwashed by the dairy industry. They begin their “salesmanship” in elementary schools where children are lied to and told that milk builds strong bones and teeth. NOT!

Our own government for no other reason than big bucks has betrayed us, the people. We wonder why so much illness when we are supposed to be the best fed nation on earth. We are the worst fed nation! Yes, there is much food, but not often the most nutritious food, which promotes health.

Got Milk? Yes, I have yummy tasting soy, rice and sometimes coconut milks, which innocently and beautifully nourish me. I do not have the mucus-causing, allergy and osteoporosis producing, artery clogging, fluid from a poor, tortured creature. Who needs that? Not I!

Someone said recently that I was wasting my time speaking out against animals and their bi-products for food. Actually, I think what they said was that I was crazy to think I could change people’s minds about what they’ve been eating for hundreds of years. Major changes often take place because crazy people speak up to make sane people think for themselves. Perhaps somewhere along the way, I will cause a person or persons to reflect on why do they eat the flesh and guzzle the milk of God’s other creatures.

I just know I have to do what I am doing because I CARE. God put me on this earth to make a difference, not be indifferent. I will do whatever it takes to make that difference for the animals, for the environment and for the health of humankind, both animal and non-animal.

Perhaps my efforts might be called the milk of human kindness.

Copyrighted as a collection by Billie Touchstone Signer

To respond to the series: [email protected] or P. O. Box 365, Jasper, AR 72641-0365

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