Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption
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VM
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milk and dairy productsWe consume a lot of milk, butter and cheese and buy organic almost all the time. However, I still find the mechanics of dairy farming, i.e.the necessity to produce calves and kill them off, disturbing. Is there any difference in what happens to calves in organic dairy production and non-organic? I've heard that standards of animal welfare tend to be higher, but as far as I can see this isn't actually a part of being organic - so presumably it varies.
Would like to hear what anyone else knows about it. I suspect that if I don't like it, I should just drink a lot less milk! Oh well.
i also wonder what is happening with organic dairy production when I see relatively cheap organic milk in supermarkets. Is this good for producers because they are selling more or are prices driven down too low?
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Erikht
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Re: milk and dairy products | VM wrote: | | We consume a lot of milk, butter and cheese and buy organic almost all the time. However, I still find the mechanics of dairy farming, i.e.the necessity to produce calves and kill them off, disturbing. Is there any difference in what happens to calves in organic dairy production and non-organic? I've heard that standards of animal welfare tend to be higher, but as far as I can see this isn't actually a part of being organic - so presumably it varies. |
It doesn't have to mean a thing, but in the old days a farmer would be making a rather unorthodox choice when becoming organic, and they would simply have higher welfare standards because they were that kind of people. Today, when organic is becoming the hip choice of the middle classes, it will vary more.
| VM wrote: | Would like to hear what anyone else knows about it. I suspect that if I don't like it, I should just drink a lot less milk! Oh well.
i also wonder what is happening with organic dairy production when I see relatively cheap organic milk in supermarkets. Is this good for producers because they are selling more or are prices driven down too low? |
It isn't necessarily more expensive to have an organic diary production (at least not by much) than a non-organic. Also, the farmers part of the milk price is quite low, so it is no problem for the retailer to lower the price a bit without really loosing profit. In this regard, milk is a bit like coffee. The low price is a result of competition between supermarket chains, I should think.
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milkmaid
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it doesn't allows happen
the farm my daughter works at releif milker for 5 years now
they use beef bull ,all calves and i mean all are reared .they are not organic ,but rotate the grazing they use, cows are out grazing by the beach all day and milked and put in the night feilds at night,for the 3 am milking
i got a days milking as a pressie ,and really enjoyed feeding the calves in the end feild ,they spend a couple of weeks in the barn and are then turned out and play together ect  ,graze a lot of the females go on to be hill suckler cows and the bullocks for meat
i'm very chosey who i buy my milk from and so is she  ,we also buy milk from here to make our own cheese and butter,i've got goats but cannot stand goats cheese 
we both also like the idea of rose veal ,not white veal ,i'm not sure if this is always the case ,but i got a job interveiw in kent years ago and they ran the same system
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gil
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Re: milk and dairy products | VM wrote: | I've heard that standards of animal welfare tend to be higher, but as far as I can see this isn't actually a part of being organic - so presumably it varies.
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No, animal welfare is an integral part of organic farming, so every organic certification body will lay down minimum standards for that.
Obviously some organic farmers (as erikht says) will exceed those conditions. The same might be true of some non-organic farmers (like the ones milkmaid mentions)
Lower prices for organic dairy products are partly the result of the supermarkets screwing down the prices they pay to dairy farmers/suppliers (as they have to all farmers/producers). However, the lower prices are also the result of a relatively large expansion in the supply of organic dairy - a lot of dairy farmers went organic in the early 2000s, when there were considerable financial incentives and assistance to do so. Might also consider that some products are sold as loss-leaders by supermarkets to attract customers, and organic milk might well be one such.
As milkmaid also mentions - check out rose veal - this is one way that dairy farmers have managed to find a productive use for dairy bull calves. And it also means that your veal is not from calves kept in crates in the dark, but out in the fields.
[I always thought bull beef tended to be from beef breeds, not dairy ???? Is it from dairy too ?]
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milkmaid
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yep they used an AA bull first ,but he got struck by lightening ,not many thunder storms here but as we are flat the lightening always hits something
they now have archi he is a limmey bull
and he is quiet 
this is archi,escuse his shaggy coat it's windy here
also using ai a lot of sexed semem is used so you get the replacement heifers
one of the calves ,waiting to be big enough to go into the feild ,they are reared on not used for veal though
they do not surply supermarket though ,do a round themselves and supply a couple of local shops ,
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Erikht
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I would imagine that unnamed meat will be from a mixed dairy-meat breed animal, while pure bred meat animals will be named as Angus, Hereford etc. They would sell better that way, wouldn't they?
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gil
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| Erikht wrote: | | I would imagine that unnamed meat will be from a mixed dairy-meat breed animal, while pure bred meat animals will be named as Angus, Hereford etc. They would sell better that way, wouldn't they? |
Plenty of other meat breeds that don't carry the cachet of 'Aberdeen Angus', so no, unnamed meat could be a meat-meat cross.
Dairy-beef crosses result from dairy farmers that don't breed all their herd replacements, but keep their cows in calf to a meat-breed bull.
Then you get the dairy bull calves [ma and pa both dairy breeds], which have been seen as 'useless', and were therefore the ones getting the chop early on.
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milkmaid
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the sexed semen is helping with that problem a bit though
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