DAIRY IS SCARY - exposing dairy industry
For this module on Practice of Graphic Design, we’re encouraged to develop a campaign for a social cause that we’re passionate about. Being a vegan and an Animal Rights activist, I knew my approach would be on exposing the cruel and unethical industry of animal factory farming, involving production of meat, dairy, eggs and all other animal products, highly consumed by humans.
I decided to limit more my approach to a campaign that exposes only one of these industries, that for me is one of the most brutal: the Dairy industry.
There are 3 main arguments which makes the human consumption of dairy totally unacceptable:
"Cows are mammals, just like us. And mammals produce milk for one reason: to feed their babies. Cows carry their babies for 9 months, just like we do, they lactate to feed their babies, just like we do, and after weaning, they stop producing milk, just like we do. So in order to have a constant supply of cow’s milk for human consumption, we need a constant supply of pregnant cows.
In the dairy industry, cows are repeatedly inseminated, which is a nice word for raped. Once a cow gives birth, we face another roadblock to our milk’s journey. Babies after all drink their mother’s milk. So to make sure there’s constant supply of milk for us, the babies must be taken away soon after birth. This is precisely what happens in the dairy industry. If the calf is a male, he is sent to a veal farm where he is tied down, unable to move, or locked in a cage where he cannot even turn around until he’s slaughtered while still only a few weeks old. There wouldn’t exist veal if it wasn’t for the dairy industry. (...)
Every cup of yogurt, every scoop of ice cream and every glass of milk is directly connected to the deaths of those baby calves (…) We cannot forget the mothers that are left behind: cows bond intensely with their calves and will cry out for days when they are taken (…) The bodies of dairy cows generally give out at age 4 or 5 and they are regarded as “spent”, despite their natural lifespan of 20 years or more. After this time, they’re sent to slaughter for cheap meat and pet food, deemed unfit for human consumption.
You see we talked about what happened to the male calves who are sent off for veal. Well, the daughters of the dairy industry are still separated from their mothers. But they’re kept around to take their mother’s place and keep the money machine going and keep the milk flowing. So that in every grocery store, every corner shop, every gas station, will be sure to stock, this wholesome, normalized, entirely ordinary product.
MILK is outcome of rape, enslavement, kidnapping, abuse, disease, torture, infanticide and murder whitewashed in the image of wholesome nutrition.”
- Emily Moran Barwick, animal rights activist
“It takes 708 gallons of water to produce a gallon of milk, yet only 208 gallons of water to produce a gallon of soy milk. (…)
Runoff from factory farming and livestock grazing is one of the most leading causes of pollution in our rivers and lakes. Almost all of the Amazon rainforest land that’s been cleared since 1970 is used for livestock grazing (…)
More than half of global greenhouse gas emissions is caused by animal agriculture”
- PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals)
“Cow's milk is designed by Nature to turn a 65 lb calf into a 700 lb cow as rapidly as possible. Everything in that white liquid: the hormones, the lipids, the protein, the sodium, the growth factors, the IGF1; everything is there to blow that calf up to a big cow or it wouldn’t be there.
Whether you turn it into butter, whether you coagulate into yogurts, whether you ferment it into cheese, whether you freeze it into ice cream: it’s baby calf growth fluid. Not only does it promote the growth of tissues all over the body but this is the milk of a large mammal that just had a baby.
Well, that milk is made of estrogens, all mother’s milk is filled of estrogens. Now, thanks to modern dairy techniques, the cow is already pregnant with its next calf, so milk is being sucked off large pregnant bovines and the estrogen content of this liquid is through the roof.
Studies have shown now with two glasses of milk and within 15 minutes your urine is pouring: estrone, progesterone, estradiol and estriol, these potent mammalian hormones. Why do women in the west get all these breast lumps? It’s not normal, it’s not natural, they’re eating estrogens and there’s a concern that it contributes to breast lumps, it makes the uterus response with heavy periods, they get benign tumors called fibers that make them bleed heavily and they get anemia. The dairy protein, the casein, these are not friendly in an human body. Studies back this up, these proteins make asthma worse, they induce acne, the whey protein stimulates genes that makes the oil glands in the skin put on acid oil. (…)"
- Interview with Dr Michael Kleper
The campaign’s approach will be on the animal welfare and aims the consumers to ditch Dairy.
