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JAINA CONVENTION 2011
"Live and Help Live"
Mother's Day & The Feminist's Dilemma
Ari Solomon
Ari Solomon is the President and co-creator of the celebrated vegan candle line A Scent of Scandal®. After graduating from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Ari first worked as an actor in New York and Los Angeles, and later hosted the wildly popular ARI'S HOLLYWOOD UPDATE on Miami's Y-100FM. A prolific activist andwriter for animal and human rights, Ari's letters have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, and The Advocate. He blogs regularly for The Huffington Post.
investigation from inside the E6 Cattle Co., a farm that raises calves to become dairy cows). You may think it's silly, even offensive, to compare the plight of female humans with that of another species, but keep an open mind as you read further. You may just be surprised.
Let's first begin with this: all dairy cows are female and have to be pregnant to produce milk. When stated, that fact may seem obvious, but it never occurs to most people that cows produce milk for the same reason all mammals do, to feed their babies. A COW'S gestation period is actually the same as a human being's, nine months.
Natural behavior; shocker - animals love their kids just as much as we do.
I'm a proud feminist, as anyone who cares about the plight of women on our planet should be. In many parts of the world, women are still treated as property. They have few. if any, rights and are subject to exploitation, indignities, and violence on a daily basis. As we feminists struggle for an end to female oppression, we must also consider the females that we, ourselves, unknowingly oppress. Dairy cows, though not human, are perhaps the most horribly abused females on the planet. As we fight for human equality, should we not also concern ourselves with how we humans exploit female animals, specifically mothers?
Since dairy cows are not afforded the natural act of mating with a bull, they are sent to an area of the farm called "the rape rack." No joke. There, a metal pipe is shoved inside their vaginas to deposit sperm. Once impregnated, a dairy cow lives in a stall where she can barely turn around. As her fetus grows, she starts producing milk. At this point, a cold mechanical pump is hooked to her udders several times a day to take the milk. On most farms, hormones are given to the cows to make them produce unnatural amounts. More milk = more money for the dairy farmer. This makes the cows' udders swell enormously, causing horrible pain and infection.
If you think that question sounds crazy, it's likely because you, like most Americans, know little about what goes on in our nation's dairy farms. (Just last week, Mercy For Animals released this gruesome undercover
When a dairy cow gives birth, she is only allowed 24 hours with her newborn calf. After that, her baby is taken from her. If the baby is a female, she will most likely become a dairy
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