There is hardly a topic that divides people at the dining table more than their own diet. Vegans: inside stand up for the rights and feelings of animals, while meat eaters close their eyes and enjoy their cheeseburgers. Our author illustrates her opinion on the horror of industry.
“I couldn’t be vegan!” – this is a sentence that vegans hear more often inside. From meat eaters or vegetarians: inside. Actually by everyone who does not follow a vegan diet. Often these people ask me how I would do it – they couldn’t. Then I have to think of the cruel torments that so-called farm animals go through every day and I get sad.
Dejected because the fates of animals in the industry are no secret. Yet so many people turn a blind eye to it. I would love to show such people videos and pictures of chicks being shredded alive. Or of suckler cows who cry for their babies because they have been taken away from them and are already on their way to the butcher. Or of injured pigs that are standing close and waiting in pain for their death.
But nobody wants to hear that. And that makes me resign. It makes me feel discouraged. Because every day millions of animals suffer and so many people who know this do nothing about it.
Is there cruelty to animals only with “pets”?
I wonder why people are so cruel and put themselves above other living beings – and then also torment them. How can you not have compassion on videos in which cows are tortured, but cry out loud once the baby cat is abandoned? The latter is animal cruelty, with farm animals it is different.
How ruthless does one have to be to knowingly engage in the killing of millions of animals just to eat a piece of meat or drink a glass of milk? Does it even affect these people to hear stories like Carla’s? She is the perfect example of the horror of the industry.
Torment right after birth
Carla was born in a dark, dirty and cold stable. There was a terrible smell of feces and urine and it was cramped. After a few days, she was separated from her mother. She was lucky in misfortune: while the bull calves were being brought to the slaughterhouse, she was put into a solitary stall. Mother and child cried for one another for days.
After a few months – when Carla had grown and reached sexual maturity – she was artificially inseminated and became pregnant. With all the other pregnant cows she found herself in the stable in which she too had seen the light of day.
The normal life of a dairy cow
Normally Carla would have had a calf that would have been taken away from her so that her milk could have been sucked off with a human milking machine. The milking machine would have injured her udder, the split floor attacked her claws and legs and the limited space, the darkness and the stench in the barn ruined her well-being.
Above all would have been the recurring process of artificial insemination, births and separation from their calves. Until one day Carla was sorted out and slaughtered because of insufficient milk yield. Maybe when you are five or six years old – probably even earlier.
Dead calf in the womb
But things turned out differently: Carla did not give birth to a calf. Without the farmer taking care of it or doing any aftercare, the dead calf remained in its womb. The farmer ignored fever and other defensive reactions from Carla’s body. He blamed them for other diseases, but didn’t call for a vet.
When Carla’s body was completely eaten away from inflammation and the calf in her belly was already mummified, the farmer sorted her out. Her milk yield had declined because her weakened body had no strength left to do so.
No salvation for Carla
Carla came to a cattle dealer. From there it should be sold on to a butcher. An animal rights activist saved her from death, only to find out a few days later that Carla could no longer be saved. She ate little or nothing and could hardly stand. Investigations showed that her calf was rotting in Carla. The carcass had poisoned her body. There was nothing more that veterinarians and animal rights activists could have done for the young cow. Carla was only two years old.
To this day it is not clear how something like this could happen. The problem: Carla is not an isolated case. A few weeks later, exactly the same thing happened. Another cow had suffered incredible agony because her dead calf was left in her body and the farmer had not helped her.
Support for such an industry?
I wonder how one can in good conscience support such an industry. Why do people close their eyes to it? Most of them do not look at videos and pictures of tortured “farm animals”. They say, “I can’t see this” or “That makes me sad” because they can’t bear to witness this misery. But that’s exactly the point. If you know about the torture of animals and can’t watch videos and pictures of it because it’s too traumatic, why don’t you actively try to change something in the situation?
A simple change in diet is sufficient: renouncing cow’s milk, cheese, yoghurt and other dairy products. So that no more cow has to experience this suffering. Vegan life has long since ceased to be a sacrifice, just a switch to vegan alternatives. A change so that animals no longer have to suffer, so that a cow like Carla will never suffer again and so that no bull calves have to die in the first weeks of their lives – all for a price of around 10 euros.
10 euros for a life. Nobody would give their newborns for 10 euros. It’s crazy that we do this to cows just to get their milk. I think anyone who knows about the suffering of animals and can still bite into a cheese roll with relish is cold.
Anyone who would like to help animals like Carla beyond the vegan diet can take on a sponsorship on a Lebenshof. At the “Lebenshof Wilde Hilde”, for example, this is already possible from 5 euros a month – 5 euros, which ensures a suffering-free, species-appropriate life. All information is available here.
This article originally appeared on stern.de.