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A well-nourished, well-protected, comfortable cow will produce much more milk than is required by its normal complement of newborns, and it will (and loudly) wa

A well-nourished, well-protected, comfortable cow will produce much more milk than is required by its normal complement of newborns, and it will (and loudly) want rid of it. In my experience not milking a dairy cow of the excess would be considerably more cruel than milking it, even if you kept the milk exclusively for the newborns, and I’m pretty sure the cows I’ve seen milked in rural Nepal would agree.

ivell 28d ago
> I’m pretty sure the cows I’ve seen milked in rural Nepal would agree. I am not sure any species are going to appreciate being enslaved. And since we can't actually ask the cows, we can only assume based on how we feel about it. In any case we are talking about ethics here, and cows definitely cannot consent being born and bred in captivity. So even if we are doing this out of kindness (which is of course not), it is still non-consensual. > In my experience not milking a dairy cow of the excess would be considerably more cruel than milking it, even if you kept the milk exclusively for the newborns Why don't we then help other mammals? Why do we help out only cows? It is obvious that we like the milk and we are trying to justify enslaving a whole species for it. I see this kind of argument in many discussions. It basically boils down to what is your comfort zone of empathy. Jains have drawn it at killing and suffering but not enslavement. Vegans have included enslavement in their ethical framework but not plants and so on.
- osjdiwjdej 28d ago
  Food chains exist. Animals cannot give or deny consent. Certain approaches can be cruel, but not all. It’s a settled discussion, any further arguments border on the nonsensical.
- yawpitch 28d ago
  We don’t help only cows, we milk a whole lot of mammals. Admittedly many mammals aren’t all that into being milked, and many (if not most) of the carnivorous animals won’t let you hang around long enough to see if they do, or do not, consent, but it’s not solely because we like milk, nor is it solely parasitic (and certainly not solely slavery). Humans have milked orangutans to feed baby orangutans, milked giraffes to feed other giraffes, and milked elephants because, rather like cows, they can get right cranky (and downright dangerous) when there’s insufficient young to remove the excess. For that matter we help our own species, at times, express milk that needs to be expressed — admittedly in that case usually (one hopes) with explicit verbal consent. Nature does not make precisely one teat per toddler, nor does nature produce precisely one portion per progeny. I’ll admit we’ve primarily treated cattle like, well, cattle, but you give me a cow and a bull and sufficient forage and, assuming they like each other and I keep the predators at bay, I’ll soon have a herd and more milk than they know what to do with… if she’s had fewer than four calves (likely) and especially if she’s only had one, then on a roughly daily basis she’ll be bursting at the seams and pushing up against all sorts of things for relief. I get where you’re coming from, but I’ve seen with my own eyes cows essentially orgasm when someone finally helps get the first really cheezy, frothy, kinda curdled bits out of a neglected nipple. Now I for one wouldn’t go saying I like that milk, I wouldn’t even say I’d come close to consider drinking it… but I’ve seen enough looks of ecstatic delight on enough mammals (of a great many species) to know that it can be a relief to express the unexpressed, and the species doing the expression isn’t of that much issue at all times. Ever seen the eyes of a shark roll back into its head when you find the bit of obviously dead skin it hasn’t been able to rub off and hasn’t been able to get a wrasse hole near and you give it a back scritch where it by evolutionary design can never reach? I have. Am I imagining that ecstasy? I mean probably… but said shark kept coming back to me for like half an hour. Maybe it was brain damaged, but maybe my choice to do what it didn’t verbally consent to was nevertheless what it was hoping something would do, to whatever degree it can hope. Or maybe I did a shark a dirty and I should feel ashamed… or, for that matter, maybe a shark did me a dirty and both of us should feel ashamed… honestly, not sure now, hence I’ll resolve the dissonance by continuing to assume I just helped out a creature that looked like it really regretted not having evolved fingernails and opposable thumbs. What I sure as hell didn’t do was enslave that dogfish, any more than I’ve personally enslaved any animal.
  - ivell 28d ago
    We have selectively bred cows to produce far more milk than necessary. For example the native breed of Indian cows did not have enough milk and people used to purchase "Jersey" cows for better milk output. I think the excess milk issue is human made problem than one that is naturally occuring at scale enough for human consumption (time to time humans also have excell milk - but not enoughto feed entire family or neighbors).
    - yawpitch 28d ago
      Mutual evolutionary pressures represent a kind of symbiotic relationship, even when that symbiotism is heavily weighted to one side. In your view has the anemone enslaved the clownfish? Or the decorator shrimp the anemone? In all cases one side has applied selective pressure to the other. Sure, that’s not conscious, thinking, reasoned selective pressure, but then neither was it with us until some emergent moment. Also quite a few human communities have relied on excess milk supply being used for communal rearing. Most mammals produce more milk than is required when sufficiently fed… yeah we’ve selected for the cows that produce the most from the least, but arguably nature was already doing that, it just hadn’t planned for another parasitic species figuring out pens and tractors.
      - ivell 27d ago
        > Mutual evolutionary pressures represent a kind of symbiotic relationship Those species do not care about ethics. Our discussion started from ethics, which is uniquely human. We are not discussing if a behavior occurs in nature. We are discussing if that behavior is ethical for humans. Now, if we can use that natual occurance argument, then we can also present the argument that carnivores have always killed and that justifies our consumption of meat.
        yawpitch 27d ago
        > Those species do not care about ethics. Our discussion started from ethics, which is uniquely human. We are not discussing if a behavior occurs in nature. We are discussing if that behavior is ethical for humans. Those species also don’t care if they’re domesticated or enslaved. The cow doesn’t care if it’s milked, so long as it’s done gently, indeed it seemingly enjoys it and will avidly seek out a milker. The cow doesn’t care if any excess of milk surplus to its calf’s requirements is taken from it, indeed it will loudly call for it to be taken. The cow doesn’t care about consent, or the fact it hasn’t given it (and can’t)… the cow cares only for ample water, some salt, good grass, a warm and dry place to sleep, a minimum number of flies, an occasional burp, someone to remove the pies that keep piling up everywhere, and nothing nearby with claws or teeth. If its “enslaver” provides all of that, the cow wouldn’t (and couldn’t) consider itself “enslaved”. Is it ethical for a human to consume the meat of a cow? Sure… right up until that human seriously engages with ethics. Is it ethical for them to continue to treat as domesticated a species that has adapted to that domestication? Yes, or that species will suffer an environment it’s no longer adapted for. Is it more ethical to do so without consuming the animal’s meat? Sure, or at least until after that animal’s natural death. Is it more ethical to do so without consuming the animal’s milk? No, not inherently, because the cow does not have to suffer for that milk. If I have a cow and I care for that cow and that cow wants rid of some excess milk and I rid it of that milk in a caring way then there’s no cognizable ethical reason for me to not consume the resulting milk, any more than it would be unethical of me to eat the cast off skin of a snake or unfertilized eggs in an abandoned nest or apples fallen from the tree. Is it more ethical of me to consume only the dairy I know was sourced in an ethical manner? Of course. Should we move towards an entirely symbiotic relationship with the species we’ve domesticated? One that isn’t parasitic? Absolutely, and we certainly should… and the further the degree to which we do the less we can cast that symbiosis as slavery and still sound reasonable. One hopes the decorator crab and the anemone evolve towards that mutually-aiding symbiosis as well; and one hopes if the former ever evolves to consider ethics it then walks a long road towards expanding its circle of empathy to the point where it considers caring for the weird little death-dealing hairball on its claws. But where it discovers said hairballs have been evolved to suit those claws it shouldn’t feel particularly guilty for benefitting from the symbiosis that has now attained.
prteja11 28d ago
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ivell 28d ago

> I’m pretty sure the cows I’ve seen milked in rural Nepal would agree. I am not sure any species are going to appreciate being enslaved. And since we can't actually ask the cows, we can only assume based on how we feel about it. In any case we are talking about ethics here, and cows definitely cannot consent being born and bred in captivity. So even if we are doing this out of kindness (which is of course not), it is still non-consensual. > In my experience not milking a dairy cow of the excess would be considerably more cruel than milking it, even if you kept the milk exclusively for the newborns Why don't we then help other mammals? Why do we help out only cows? It is obvious that we like the milk and we are trying to justify enslaving a whole species for it. I see this kind of argument in many discussions. It basically boils down to what is your comfort zone of empathy. Jains have drawn it at killing and suffering but not enslavement. Vegans have included enslavement in their ethical framework but not plants and so on.

osjdiwjdej 28d ago
Food chains exist. Animals cannot give or deny consent. Certain approaches can be cruel, but not all. It’s a settled discussion, any further arguments border on the nonsensical.
yawpitch 28d ago
We don’t help only cows, we milk a whole lot of mammals. Admittedly many mammals aren’t all that into being milked, and many (if not most) of the carnivorous animals won’t let you hang around long enough to see if they do, or do not, consent, but it’s not solely because we like milk, nor is it solely parasitic (and certainly not solely slavery). Humans have milked orangutans to feed baby orangutans, milked giraffes to feed other giraffes, and milked elephants because, rather like cows, they can get right cranky (and downright dangerous) when there’s insufficient young to remove the excess. For that matter we help our own species, at times, express milk that needs to be expressed — admittedly in that case usually (one hopes) with explicit verbal consent. Nature does not make precisely one teat per toddler, nor does nature produce precisely one portion per progeny. I’ll admit we’ve primarily treated cattle like, well, cattle, but you give me a cow and a bull and sufficient forage and, assuming they like each other and I keep the predators at bay, I’ll soon have a herd and more milk than they know what to do with… if she’s had fewer than four calves (likely) and especially if she’s only had one, then on a roughly daily basis she’ll be bursting at the seams and pushing up against all sorts of things for relief. I get where you’re coming from, but I’ve seen with my own eyes cows essentially orgasm when someone finally helps get the first really cheezy, frothy, kinda curdled bits out of a neglected nipple. Now I for one wouldn’t go saying I like that milk, I wouldn’t even say I’d come close to consider drinking it… but I’ve seen enough looks of ecstatic delight on enough mammals (of a great many species) to know that it can be a relief to express the unexpressed, and the species doing the expression isn’t of that much issue at all times. Ever seen the eyes of a shark roll back into its head when you find the bit of obviously dead skin it hasn’t been able to rub off and hasn’t been able to get a wrasse hole near and you give it a back scritch where it by evolutionary design can never reach? I have. Am I imagining that ecstasy? I mean probably… but said shark kept coming back to me for like half an hour. Maybe it was brain damaged, but maybe my choice to do what it didn’t verbally consent to was nevertheless what it was hoping something would do, to whatever degree it can hope. Or maybe I did a shark a dirty and I should feel ashamed… or, for that matter, maybe a shark did me a dirty and both of us should feel ashamed… honestly, not sure now, hence I’ll resolve the dissonance by continuing to assume I just helped out a creature that looked like it really regretted not having evolved fingernails and opposable thumbs. What I sure as hell didn’t do was enslave that dogfish, any more than I’ve personally enslaved any animal.
- ivell 28d ago
  We have selectively bred cows to produce far more milk than necessary. For example the native breed of Indian cows did not have enough milk and people used to purchase "Jersey" cows for better milk output. I think the excess milk issue is human made problem than one that is naturally occuring at scale enough for human consumption (time to time humans also have excell milk - but not enoughto feed entire family or neighbors).
  - yawpitch 28d ago
    Mutual evolutionary pressures represent a kind of symbiotic relationship, even when that symbiotism is heavily weighted to one side. In your view has the anemone enslaved the clownfish? Or the decorator shrimp the anemone? In all cases one side has applied selective pressure to the other. Sure, that’s not conscious, thinking, reasoned selective pressure, but then neither was it with us until some emergent moment. Also quite a few human communities have relied on excess milk supply being used for communal rearing. Most mammals produce more milk than is required when sufficiently fed… yeah we’ve selected for the cows that produce the most from the least, but arguably nature was already doing that, it just hadn’t planned for another parasitic species figuring out pens and tractors.
    - ivell 27d ago
      > Mutual evolutionary pressures represent a kind of symbiotic relationship Those species do not care about ethics. Our discussion started from ethics, which is uniquely human. We are not discussing if a behavior occurs in nature. We are discussing if that behavior is ethical for humans. Now, if we can use that natual occurance argument, then we can also present the argument that carnivores have always killed and that justifies our consumption of meat.
      - yawpitch 27d ago
        > Those species do not care about ethics. Our discussion started from ethics, which is uniquely human. We are not discussing if a behavior occurs in nature. We are discussing if that behavior is ethical for humans. Those species also don’t care if they’re domesticated or enslaved. The cow doesn’t care if it’s milked, so long as it’s done gently, indeed it seemingly enjoys it and will avidly seek out a milker. The cow doesn’t care if any excess of milk surplus to its calf’s requirements is taken from it, indeed it will loudly call for it to be taken. The cow doesn’t care about consent, or the fact it hasn’t given it (and can’t)… the cow cares only for ample water, some salt, good grass, a warm and dry place to sleep, a minimum number of flies, an occasional burp, someone to remove the pies that keep piling up everywhere, and nothing nearby with claws or teeth. If its “enslaver” provides all of that, the cow wouldn’t (and couldn’t) consider itself “enslaved”. Is it ethical for a human to consume the meat of a cow? Sure… right up until that human seriously engages with ethics. Is it ethical for them to continue to treat as domesticated a species that has adapted to that domestication? Yes, or that species will suffer an environment it’s no longer adapted for. Is it more ethical to do so without consuming the animal’s meat? Sure, or at least until after that animal’s natural death. Is it more ethical to do so without consuming the animal’s milk? No, not inherently, because the cow does not have to suffer for that milk. If I have a cow and I care for that cow and that cow wants rid of some excess milk and I rid it of that milk in a caring way then there’s no cognizable ethical reason for me to not consume the resulting milk, any more than it would be unethical of me to eat the cast off skin of a snake or unfertilized eggs in an abandoned nest or apples fallen from the tree. Is it more ethical of me to consume only the dairy I know was sourced in an ethical manner? Of course. Should we move towards an entirely symbiotic relationship with the species we’ve domesticated? One that isn’t parasitic? Absolutely, and we certainly should… and the further the degree to which we do the less we can cast that symbiosis as slavery and still sound reasonable. One hopes the decorator crab and the anemone evolve towards that mutually-aiding symbiosis as well; and one hopes if the former ever evolves to consider ethics it then walks a long road towards expanding its circle of empathy to the point where it considers caring for the weird little death-dealing hairball on its claws. But where it discovers said hairballs have been evolved to suit those claws it shouldn’t feel particularly guilty for benefitting from the symbiosis that has now attained.

prteja11 28d ago

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