"Most people understand why I don’t eat meat, but when I explain that I also don’t eat cheese or other dairy products, some people seem a little baffled. “Why, do they milk the cows too hard?” is a question I’ve been asked on more than one occasion. This shows just how far removed many people are from what they eat. They like to think of cows frolicking in open green pastures and being gently milked by kindly old farmers in overalls.

That only happens in storybooks.

On modern dairy farms, most cows are kept in feces- and urine-saturated grassless lots. Cows give milk for the same reason humans do—to feed their babies.  But dairy farmers artificially impregnate cows every year so that they'll produce a steady supply of milk for humans. A typical factory-farmed dairy cow will give birth three or four times in her five-year life. None of her babies will taste her milk.

They are taken from their mothers soon after birth. Separating the cows and calves causes trauma and anguish to both baby and mother. In his book An Anthropologist on Mars, Dr. Oliver Sacks described a visit he and livestock industry advisor Dr. Temple Grandin made to a dairy farm, and of the heart-wrenching bellowing they heard:

“They must have separated the calves from the cows this morning,’ Temple said, and, indeed, this was what had happened. We saw one cow outside the stockade, roaming, looking for her calf, and bellowing. “That’s not a happy cow,’ Temple said. ‘That’s one sad, unhappy, upset cow. She wants her baby. Bellowing for it, hunting for it. She’ll forget for a while, then start again. It’s like grieving, mourning--not much written about it. People don’t like to allow them thoughts or feelings.’”

After they’re taken from their mothers, male calves are often sold to veal farms where they're chained in tiny dark stalls with slatted floors. Since the milk meant to nourish them winds up in the supermarket, they are fed a milk substitute that is purposely low in iron so they become anemic and their flesh stays pale and tender. They take their first weak, wobbly steps to slaughter when they are between 16 and 18 weeks old.

Female calves are turned into milk machines like their mothers. When their milk production wanes, the cows are sent to the slaughterhouse, where many are hung upside-down and skinned alive..."

Read the rest of the article at http://www.care2.com/causes/animal-welfare/blog/got-soy-milk-new-investigation-underscores-reasons-to-dump-dairy/