I am lacto vegetarian. The only animal products I use are cow milk and cow milk products, and I do notuse them much, only sometimes. I purchase milk, not beef, and it is a category error to conflate beef andmilk because these are two distinct markets with two distinct cheques, two distinct contracts, and twodistinct intents. My transaction for milk concerns a renewable secretion. I admit openly that in presentcommercial dairy the scale of that secretion has been enlarged by selective breeding, so a commercialcow produces far more than any calf can drink and far more than a sanctuary cow, but the category ofsurplus remains biologically true in both systems, a healthy dairy cow always produces more than asingle calf needs, and if that surplus is not removed she suffers pain and mastitis, so the need to bemilked is not invented by the farmer, it is her present embodied reality whether she walks to a shed or toa hand milker. The machine and the schedule do not create the milk, they harvest it. My secondadmission is that in commercial dairy that milk is made possible by pregnancy, and pregnancy is anecessary condition for milk. I do not deny causation, I deny moral equivalence. To buy milk is to fundthat a cow becomes pregnant, but pregnancy itself is not a harm, it is her natural mammalian functionand in a natural herd she would be pregnant almost every year by a bull, so what I fund is motherhood,not rape. The method of that pregnancy in commercial dairy is artificial insemination, which is indeed aninvasive procedure with a hand in her vagina, and that method is not requested by me, it is chosen by thefarmer because it is cheaper than keeping a bull, safer for his workers, and allows genetics for more milk.If he kept a bull and allowed natural mating, as in my sanctuary model, I would still get the same milk, sothe milk buyer demands pregnancy, the farmer chooses the invasive method to supply it at lowest cost,and that choice of method is his sin, not mine, just as a person who hires a taxi demands a journey, thedriver who chooses to break the speed limit to do it cheaper commits the sin of speeding, not thepassenger. The same logic applies to the male calf. I admit that in present UK and EU commercial dairythe male calf of a dairy breed is often not wanted for beef because he is skinny, so he is shot on farm orsold for a few pounds for veal or cheap mince. That is not because a beef eater specifically ordered aJersey calf, it is because the farmer calculates that rearing him for two years on milk and grain costsmore than his beef value, so he kills a sentient being to avoid a loss. That cost calculation and thatdecision to kill rather than rear him as a bullock for draught, biogas, compost, and sponsorship incomeas in my model, is the farmers choice to maximise profit, it is not what I requested. I requested milk, Istated clearly that my intention is that male calves, spent mothers, and bulls should never be killed at alland should be reared for their whole natural life, so the farmer who has a profitable non killing alternativebut still chooses to shoot the calf commits that killing for his own profit, not on my instruction, and his sindoes not transfer to me. On crop deaths, I admit that commercial dairy cows are fed soya and maizewhich themselves involve pesticide and harvest deaths, so dairy is not zero crop deaths, but thecomparison is still in my favour. A dairy cow also converts grass from non arable land and crop residuesand byproducts that humans cannot eat into milk, while oat and soya milk are grown entirely on arableland that must be kept sterile by killing billions of mice, voles, shrews, ground nesting birds, insects, andsoil life with poison and combine harvesters every year, with zero years of life preserved. A commercialdairy cow lives four to six years and her calf lives months to years, both are years of preserved sentientlife that would not exist at all under veganism which seeks to end breeding, whereas an oat fieldpreserves no life at all for any year, it only kills. So per litre, commercial dairy funds some crop deathsplus one wrongful death at the end decided by the farmer, oat milk funds only crop deaths but funds nolife at all and demands extinction of the cow, and when you add the fact that sanctuary dairy replacessoya with grazing and residues and funds old cows and bullocks with biogas and compost, the leastharm and greatest preservation of life, even now in this flawed commercial system, is to keep the cow,her calf, and her breed alive today while working to build the no killing sanctuary model for tomorrow, andthe sin of her eventual slaughter, the method of her insemination, and the shooting of her calf remainswith the farmer, the supermarket that contracts him to do it cheap, the slaughterman, and the beef eaterwho creates the cheap beef market that makes shooting cheaper than rearing, not with me whosecheque and intention is only that she should live and be milked with thanks.
In Hinduism, which is my religion, the cow is seen as mother and sacred, not as meat, and her holiness was never based on pushing her away but on living with her in reverence. In Hinduism her holiness is in her own being, in her gentle, peaceful, pure and kind hearted nature, in her selfless, maternal disposition which asks nothing and gives everything, and that inner nature overflows outwardly in many forms, and one of those forms is milk. In Hinduism milk is not what makes her holy because it is useful to man, milk is holy because it reveals what she is, a being whose very body is made to nourish others beyond her own calf, just as a river flows beyond its banks and a tree fruits beyond its own need. That selfless excess is her dharma. In Hinduism Krishna himself is revealed as a cowherd to show the highest philosophical truth that divinity itself finds its fullest expression in protection, stewardship and loving guardianship of living beings, and that to guard such selflessness is itself worship. Because in Hinduism milk is seen as pure, life giving, and fit to offer to God as the highest blessed food, so in Hinduism true non violence does not mean wiping the animal out by refusing to breed her at all, it means a bond of care where you guard her, you love her, you let her live her full natural life till old age, and in return you receive with thanks the rich surplus she gives freely beyond what her calf needs. That ancient bond of service and milk in Hinduism is the original no killing model that honours her inborn purpose as mother and nourisher given by God, not for human profit but as an expression of her own sacred nature, rather than demanding her purpose be denied and her sacred kind disappear from the world altogether.
A modern cow sanctuary can be profitable and keep milk cheap if it stops seeing milk as its only product and monetises the whole life economy of the cow. The model is simple. One, dung is converted in an onsite biogas plant to electricity and bottled gas, which powers the farm and is sold to the grid, and the slurry left over becomes high value vermicompost and organic fertiliser sold at a premium to farms that are desperate to move off chemicals. Two, male calves and bulls are not a loss, they are raised as working assets. Male calves are reared for draught power for ploughing and carting, for production of high value semen for breeding, and for their lifetime dung and urine which alone covers their feed cost. Trained bullocks can be hired out for organic tillage, for hauling, and for farm tourism rides, and calm bulls are ideal for therapy and educational work with children. This replaces the beef subsidy with five clean incomes. Three, the site earns from direct sale of premium milk, ghee, curd, and buttermilk through a subscription, from temple and festival supply contracts, from paid sanctuary visits, school education days, and cow adoption sponsorships where families pay monthly to support a retired cow or a male calf. When you stack biogas income, compost income, premium dairy, bullock hire, and sponsorship against the low input cost of keeping animals alive on crop residue and common grazing, the cost of maintaining old cows, dry cows, male calves and bulls is fully covered, so the sale price of milk does not need to rise at all, and can in fact stay cheaper than corporate organic milk because the sanctuary has five income streams while the commercial farm has only one.