2024 - Milk and agriculture - Swiss cows: bred to miss the mark? -News

Contents

High-performance cows that are pushed to the limit every day – criticism of this type of dairy farming comes not only from animal rights activists, but also from the industry itself.

Author:
Linus van Moorsel, Michelle Feer

“Cheap milk and a calf that grows up with its mother – there is simply no such thing.” 27-year-old Bettina Belser runs a modern dairy farm. It is clear to her that many people have lost touch with agriculture. They wouldn’t know what actually lies behind a glass of Swiss milk or a piece of cheese. “There are milking robots at work and not farmers milking the cows individually.”

Legend:

Bettina Belser also shows the most beautiful cows at shows, where they are shaved and styled.

SRF

The work of cow farmers seems hard and not very lucrative: every day two Swiss farmers give up dairy farming – according to Belser, the low milk price is often the reason for this. Many farms therefore want to produce as much milk as possible: They rely on high-performance cows that produce up to 30 kilograms of milk a day.

In Switzerland, a calf is usually separated from its mother 24 hours after birth. Animal rights activists strongly condemn this process, but farmers defend this process. In order to prevent a natural relationship between mother cow and calf from developing, farmers say late separation is more difficult. The longer the calf hangs on the udder, the less milk remains for sale.

Belser also follows this strategy: “I can produce more milk with fewer cows.” For the young farmer, this may be the right approach. For many dairy farmers, however, things hardly add up at the end of the year. Because more and more milk does not automatically mean more income – the costs of expensive concentrated feed put pressure on the balance sheet. In addition, the large and powerful cows are often more susceptible to illness – in such cases, not only the cows but also the farmers’ wallets suffer from veterinary costs.

Pure milk machines

This type of breeding is also criticized by animal rights activists. Caroline Mulle from the Foundation for Animals in Law (TIR) says: “The breeding of high-performance animals is becoming increasingly grotesque. Some of the cows have such large udders that they can no longer move as is typical for the species.” The animals would be reduced to mere milk machines.

Suckler cow farming has been established in meat production for several years. There the calves stay with their mother and are allowed to drink from her udder. This does not produce more milk than your calf needs and is therefore not milked.

In mother-bonded calf rearing, calves are also allowed to suckle from their mother, and the remaining milk is then offered for sale. In fact, the number of farms that pursue such breeding is negligible and is less than one percent.

Depending on the breed, cows in Switzerland produce almost 27 percent more milk than they did 25 years ago. In addition, the animals in breeding are always adapted to the needs of people, at the expense of their own needs, Mulle complains.