End animal suffering and go vegan (From Lancashire Telegraph)

End animal suffering and go vegan

11:25am Wednesday 26th September 2007 in Opinion By Telegraph letters

So consumers have been ripped off by the artificially high price of milk, according to the Office of Fair Trading.

I wonder whether consumers have considered the enormous price dairy cows are forced to pay so we can drink their milk.

Despite the myth of contentment, a dairy cow is the hardest worked of all farmed animals. She nurtures a growing baby inside her while simultaneously producing milk - up to 120 pints a day. To keep the flow going, she is forcibly impregnated year after year.

Cows are often emaciated, their skeletal bodies pushed to physical exhaustion by the gruelling cycle of pregnancy, birth and lactation.

It's a merciless process that ensures cows are exhausted by the age of five - a quarter of their natural lifespan.

Once born, calves are taken away after just one or two days - over 600,000 males will either be shot in the head or sent abroad for veal production this year.

And it's not just the cows that are being ripped-off.

Consumers may not realise that hormones in milk have been linked to ovarian, breast and prostate cancer, as well as juvenile-onset diabetes.

The saturated fat, cholesterol and animal protein it contains are linked to many other diseases.

Viva! believes the only way to end this unnecessary suffering is to say no to milk, and to go vegan.

For a free How to be Dairy Free' guide call us on 0117 944 1000 or log on to www.viva.org.uk AMY MASON, Viva! Campaigner, York Court, Wilder Street, Bristol.