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MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD

Flawed thinking that allows us to abuse animals

  • 24 September 2014

In October last year, a Massachusetts newspaper reported strange noises coming from a local dairy farm. The noises carried out through the entire night and into the small hours of the morning. Residents, who described the low and harrowing wails as 'spooky' and 'scary' were prompted to call the local police, who, after investigating the noise, quickly determined its cause. 

The noises were coming from the resident dairy cows who had just become new mothers. Their newborn calves had been taken to slaughter shortly after their births to stop them from consuming any milk. The mother cows were wailing through the night over the painful separation from their babies.

The next day, due to the influx of concern from local residents, the local police issued a short statement on its Facebook page to reassure the locals, 'We’ve been informed that the cows are not in distress and the noises are a normal part of farming practices'. 

There is some truth in this statement. The immediate separation of dairy calves and their mothers is a normal function of a working dairy farm. Dubbed as 'bobby calves', the newborns (who are mostly male) are considered waste products by the dairy industry. Every year around 700,000 bobby calves are slaughtered in Australia within the first week of their lives. The routine separation of mother and calf was described by activist Gary Yourofsky in a famous lecture given at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He recounted, 'the worst scream I’ve ever heard – and I’ve heard them all first hand – was of a mother cow on a dairy farm. She screams and bellows her lungs out day after day for her stolen baby to be given back to her.'

So while this part of the Massachusetts police’s statement was true, there is something deeply troubling about the next part of it; a fallacy which is so perpetually drummed into our consciousness that we either refuse to acknowledge it or choose to conveniently ignore it. The fallacy is conveyed in six short and dismissive words: 'The cows are not in distress'. 

It’s a peculiar thing when we reserve moral consideration to some but not to others. This is especially true when our reasons for doing so are very murky. The incredible contradiction we live with in our society today is that while we declare our love and appreciation for some animals, human cruelty to the less fortunate of species
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