Bobby Calves
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
I truly believe this statement to be true. And as a vegetarian, this leads me to think about the dairy industry. Of course I don’t participate in the suffering of animals that are raised for consumption, but what about the animals that produce the dairy products? Buy free range, and then you believe they have a good life whilst they produce your eggs, milk and other dairy products. But what about all the boys? I mean the males – who of course don’t produce anything to eat. So what happens to them? It’s easy to ignore thinking about this when you think of yourself as doing the right thing by not eating animals. But this too can be an area of great cruelty to animals. Like the bobby calves, for example. — the “by-products” of the dairy industry, unwanted and treated as “waste”. While dairy cows are impregnated yearly in order to produce high milk yield, the problem of ‘disposing’ of unwanted calves is routine across the entire industry. Sent to the abattoir, bawling for their mother, starving hungry as they are allowed by law to be not fed for up to thirty hours, and in some cases, treated cruelly. Their inability as babies to comprehend what is required of them, whether during loading for transport or up the races of slaughterhouses, requires them to be treated with compassion and patience — two human traits rarely witnessed when it comes to dealing with unwanted and ‘worthless’ animals.
If the thought of killing unwanted 5-day old calves is unacceptable to you, then tell the dairy industry that you don’t think animals should be discarded and killed like ‘waste products’. You can take action by writing to the dairy industry, using a link on the Animals Australia website.