It's Mother’s Day - a day to honor and celebrate moms everywhere.
As a mother and an animal advocate, I can’t help but think of all the mother cows imprisoned in factory farms, forced to endure so much pain and suffering behind the closed doors of the dairy industry.
Their calves ripped away from their sides within three days of being born. Their milk, meant to nourish their young, stolen from them.
The dairy industry relies on systematically shattering the mother-infant bond.As we cope with social isolation in the time of COVID-19, many of us are getting the smallest glimpse of what it's like to be separated from the ones we love.
This is the core truth that the industry doesn’t want you to know: In order to produce milk for humans, gentle cows must be forcibly impregnated and give birth to a baby, only to have that baby taken from her at birth and raised to continue the cycle as a dairy cow herself or be slaughtered for meat.
This is where milk comes from - a profit-driven industry that treats these smart and social animals like mere milk-producing machines.
Animal Outlook provides a rare glimpse behind the closed doors of animal agribusiness through hidden camera investigations. A recent undercover investigation of a Pennsylvania dairy farm that supplied a Nestlé ice cream plant delivered the kind of violent and cruel footage we’ve unfortunately become accustomed to seeing in these kinds of investigations over the years. As I watch this footage, it’s the simpler moments that stick with me as particularly poignant, like a scene where a mother and baby calf touch for the last time before the calf is taken away, or the mother cow who walks into the milking parlor still dragging afterbirth behind her.
By giving at animaloutlook.org/donate today, you can send an adorable, customized e-card to your own mom. When many of us cannot be together, it’s important to let those we love know we’re thinking of them, while at the same time helping those who are suffering.
As a non-profit organization, Animal Outlook relies on donations from caring, generous people like you. Every dollar matters. Your support makes a world of difference to farmed animals.