How is dairy produced?

What is dairy farming?

Milk is produced by all mammals to feed their young during infancy. Humans are unique as a species in continuing to consume milk into adulthood, and we are the only animal that routinely consumes the milk of a different species.

Most dairy in the UK comes from cows and is produced on large-scale factory farms which can house hundreds and even thousands of cows. The UK produces about 14 million tonnes of cow milk every year from a national herd of around 2.6million cows.

How is dairy milk produced?

Dairy milk in the UK comes from cows who have been specially bred to produce huge amounts of milk. They mostly live on very large industrial factory farms, and all of them must give birth to babies in order to produce milk.

Milk is taken from the cows daily and transported to large factories to be pasteurised and processed. Processing of industrially produced milk is essential for safe consumption, as milk is almost always contaminated with things like bacteria, faeces and pus.

How do farmers get milk from a cow?

Like all mammals, cows produce milk in response to giving birth to a calf. In order to get milk from cows, farmers must ensure they are constantly going through the cycle of pregnancy and birth. To get the maximum amount of milk from a mother cow, and because her babies are often of low financial value, farmers take the babies away from the mothers within a matter of hours.

Milk is taken from mother cows using a mostly automated process in which cows are moved into large sheds where machines, connected to their udders, suck the milk out and syphon it away into large vats for collection.

How much milk does a cow produce?

Cows have been selectively bred over many years to produce more and more milk. In 1939 a cow in the UK would have produced an average of about 6.7 litres a day. Now, cows produce an average of 22 litres a day.

As a result of this overproduction they are susceptible to a host of health conditions including mastitis and mulsculo-skeletal problems.

What is organic cow’s milk?

Milk that is organic comes from a farm which has met certification standards allowing it to be marketed as ‘organic’. These standards cover both environmental and animal welfare requirements. Organic milk comes from cows with a higher welfare potential, although the mistreatment of animals can, and does, happen in any system.

Organic dairy farms are required to give cows access to outdoor pasture for grazing during the grass-growing season, which is usually for about half the year from March - September. When indoors, the cows should be kept on straw bedding as opposed to concrete or slats. Cows producing organic milk must be fed a diet that is lower in grains and concentrates, meaning that usually ‘organic cows’ are breeds which produce slightly lower, more sustainable milk quantities.

Do cows bond with their calves?

In a natural setting, a calf will stay with their mother for a year or more, because the pair form extremely strong bonds. Bonding begins immediately at birth, with mother cows grooming and protecting their young. This strong bond has evolved over millions of years and is a deeply ingrained natural response, because it is essential for the survival of the calf.

Do cows get separated from their calves?

In the dairy industry, almost all calves are removed from their mothers within a matter of hours or days of birth. This practice is carried out primarily for economic gain, so that more milk can be taken by the farmer.

Male calves are often killed because their breed means they are not valuable enough to rear for meat, although some are reared as veal. Females are usually taken away to be reared on artificial milk replacer so that when they are old enough they can replace the mother cows in the herd that are killed.

Dairy cows and calves experience deep psychological pain on farms on account of separation. Farmers have witnessed mother cows calling out for days at a time after their calves are removed from them, and calves that have been separated exhibit social and behavioural problems as a result.

Are dairy cows killed? How long do cows live?

A healthy, well cared for cow can live for twenty years or more. However, dairy cows that are bred to produce large volumes of milk are usually killed after three or four lactations (at about 5 years old). This is because they get chronically lame, sick, infertile and/or the amount of milk they produce reduces.

Dairy cows are often transported over long distances to be killed, because there are not very many slaughterhouses which will take dairy cows in the UK.

What is the welfare like on dairy farms?

Welfare on dairy farms can vary widely, but there are some problems that are common to all industrial farms.

All industrially-reared dairy cows (including on organic farms) will experience calf separation, and the vast majority will endure the health problems associated with intensive breeding. It is said that producing such huge amounts of milk is so hard on the body, it’s like running a marathon every day. That’s why most dairy cows must be fed high-calorie feeds such as grains and even waste products from the baking industry just to keep them going.

Increasingly, cows in the UK live in zero-grazing farms in sheds with hundreds or thousands of other cows. They will never get to experience natural grazing, or feel the sun on their backs. Instead, they will live their whole lives in filthy sheds on concrete or slatted floors.

Being housed indoors increases the risk of conditions like Mastitis, which are common across the industry. In a herd of 100 cows in the UK, there could be as many as 70 cases of mastitis every year on average.

Dairy cows who do go out for the grass-growing season will benefit from having that time outdoors - and indeed dairy cows have been known to ‘dance’ on their first day out after a long winter indoors.

The reason most dairy cows cannot be given access to the outdoors during the winter is because intensive breeding has made their bodies too weak to be able to safely move around in slippery and uneven conditions. Their udders are so large that their hips and legs are weakened and a slip in the mud could cause a fatal injury. In some cases, cows' back legs must be shackled together to prevent the risk of their frail legs from sliding apart and doing irreparable damage to their hips and pelvis.

What are grass fed cows?

Many people may assume that a ‘grass-fed’ label means the milk comes from a herd kept out on a grassy field all year round, enjoying a natural diet. However, the term can be applied to any herd that is fed at least 51% grass, and there is currently no system in place for inspecting or policing the use of this term.

The term also doesn't require cows to be taken to the grass - the grass can be brought to the cow, inside a shed.

Conclusion/what can I do?

Dairy farming isn’t good for cows, and there’s a lot of evidence that eating it isn’t good for us either. Why not consider leaving dairy products off your plate? There are lots of great tasting and more sustainable plant milks to try.

Read on for 10 amazing facts about cows you might not know!