The First Time Love Stayed: Reflections from the Animal World

From the Mothers Against Dairy website, a warm and uplifting story about the first time a rescued dairy cow gets to keep her calf!

The unimaginable treatment that mother cows and their babies endure in the dairy industry is not in alignment with what the Bible teaches. God gave humans the very serious task of stewardship or dominion which means we are to protect the the rest of creation and see that it flourishes, just as God Himself would!

Around the world on February 14th, billions of people will indulge in gifts, dinners, flowers and other perfunctory symbols of celebration for their romantic partners. Others will extend the celebration to include beloved friends and family members. All told, this year consumers are projected to spend a total of $25.8 billion dollars on Valentine’s day. In the US alone, that price tag includes more than 60 million pounds of chocolate that will be gifted. As conversations around food have increasingly centered on ethics in recent years, more and more people will be looking to buy candy that wasn’t a product of child labor and slavery, or rainforest destruction. But what about the dairy that goes into milk chocolate production and other sweet treats?

If you’ve ever seen one of the heartbreaking videos of newborn calves being ripped from their mothers in the dairy industry, leaving their mothers to frantically trail after their babies in panic, you know that the dairy industry depends on destroying the mother-child bond. So when I recently encountered a video where a woman was picking up a clearly just-born calf and carrying them away from their mother, my heart stopped. I wasn’t ready to watch yet another disturbing video of this common practice.

But as I watched a little longer, I noticed the manner in which the woman gently patted the calf’s face and the mother at the same time. She was letting the mom know that she was a safe space for her and her newborn, and I knew that something was different about this video. The interaction seemed tender and protective – two words that I would never use to describe the dairy industry, even after touring over a dozen so-called “humane” dairy farms. As the woman scoops up the newborn and walks slowly down a hill, you can observe the mother cow calmly following along. Excited about the new arrival, donkeys and horses join in on the procession.

[watch the video below]

At the same time, I felt a pang of sorrow in my chest, as mothers used by the dairy industry will never know this sort of care and celebration. In fact, the mother cow featured in this video was rescued from the dairy industry when and had never before been allowed to keep her baby. Overwhelmingly the products of artificial insemination, 97% of newborn dairy calves are forcibly removed from their mothers within the first 24 hours. The suffering and loss that this mother had already been forced to endure in the name of “dairy” is unimaginable to me.

Please read the entire article here.