The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

The Domination of the Feminine / 117
and forefinger. Even in small calves, the nerve supply to their teats is
well developed. Make sure the calf is well restrained before you proceed.
Pull the teat outwards and take a generous bite with the scissors.”
12 Dehorning, tail docking, and teat removal not only cause intense
pain but also increase the risk of infection and thus the spread of disease.
They help account for the widespread problem of Bovine
Leukemia Virus, which infects cows in an estimated eighty-nine percent
of U.S. dairies 13 and, according to researchers at the University of
California, may pose a cancer threat to consumers. 14
Whereas in the wild a heifer would not be ready to have her first
calf for at least three to five years, that is far too long to feed her without
getting milk money from her. Cow feed is expensive, so operators
want to get her into production quickly, which means getting her pregnant
as soon as possible, in just a year or less, when she is still a mere
child in human terms. This is accomplished through hormone manipulation,
administering excessive amounts of estrogen and other hormones,
as well as prostaglandin, a hormone that is used to bring cows
into heat when dairy operators want to have them inseminated. In the
vast majority of cases, the dairy cow will be confined to a stall or milking
paddock year-round, often exposed to extreme temperatures, with
nothing to do but eat and stand in one place, reduced to the status of a
milk-producing machine. She will be inseminated by a sperm gun
shoved elbow-deep into her vagina and fired. The sperm comes from a
special bull who also exists to be milked—for his sperm—and will be
slaughtered when his productivity declines.
As soon as she gives birth, the cow’s baby will be quickly stolen
from her, and she will be milked two to three times per day by the milking
machines. No longer something done by her, milking is something
inflicted upon her. The machines often cause cuts and injuries and can
lead to mastitis, infection of the udder, which is rampant in modern
dairies. Sometimes the milking machines give electrical shocks as well,
causing considerable discomfort and fear. The cow may also be
“drenched,” a procedure routinely performed on some cows after giving
birth to reduce metabolic diseases in early lactation. Many gallons
of nutrient-dense solution are forced into her through a seven-foot tube