The Daily Psyop

Forwarded from Derrick Broze's Daily News

The Truth About Organic Milk

Cows are suffering on even the most “humane” dairy farms.

This winter, I attended a livestock auction on California’s remote northern coast. Ranchers sat on plywood bleachers warming their hands as the auctioneer mumble-chanted and handlers flushed cows into a viewing paddock one by one. Most of the cows were hale animals, careering in and cantering out. But one little brown cow moved tentatively, rheum slicking her left eye and a denim patch covering her right.

That night, I went to take a closer look at her along with a pair of animal-welfare investigators and some of the traders who had participated in the auction. Cow 13039, as her ear tag identified her, was segregated with other sick or injured cattle in a pen near the viewing paddock. A farmhand led her into a squeeze chute, so that I could see her udders and feel her bony sides and scratch her head.

The denim patch had been glued straight onto her right orbital rim. I helped work up the patch’s edge; when a rancher finally ripped it off, her eyeball swelled from its socket, tethered to her skull by muscle and sinew and skin. Unable to focus, the eye rotated wildly. It had ruptured, its wet inner contents extruding from the broken membrane; blood and green pus suppurated from its edges, smelling of copper and must. The cow had “cancer eye,” the rancher who had purchased her guessed, the most common bovine cancer.

Cow 13039, the auction affidavit showed, came from one of the country’s preeminent dairy farms: Alexandre Family Farm, a nationwide supplier to stores including Whole Foods. Alexandre cows are pasture-raised, and the operation is validated by California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), Certified Humane, and the Regenerative Organic Alliance. Its owners, Blake and Stephanie Alexandre, won the Organic Farmer of the Year award a few years back and have been profiled by The New York Times. For $8, you can buy about a third of a gallon of its top-shelf milk.

The Alexandres sold dozens of grievously ill and injured cows at auction over the past four years, according to a sprawling whistleblower report published by the nonprofit advocacy group Farm Forward. On the farm, the report charges, mismanagement led to “the extreme suffering of hundreds of cows.” One whistleblower contacted the local sheriff and the United States Department of Agriculture, among other organizations, to report animal-welfare violations, but without results. The report is based on hundreds of location- and date-tagged photographs and videos collected over a four-year period by people who worked either with or for Alexandre Family Farm, as well as on affidavits, veterinary reports, and interviews.

Alexandre is not just any farm; it is esteemed by chefs, politicians, and advocates for humane agriculture, and consumers seek out its products. The report implicates not just the farm but also the certification programs that farms like it use to assure consumers that the food they are eating is ethically sourced and cruelty-free. And it implicates the government, which does little to protect the welfare of farm animals. Laws are lax and enforcement is even more lax, despite widespread public support for animal protection.

When I met Cow 13039, a dying animal sold to the highest bidder, I thought that the system had failed her. But in reporting this story, I found something far more disconcerting. No system had failed her, because there was no system to protect her in the first place.

READ: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/alexandre-farms-treatment-of-animals/677980/

The Atlantic

The Truth About Organic Milk

Cows are suffering on even the most “humane” dairy farms.

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