If you refer to my earlier post, I asked some who had a dairy herd what would happen if he just stopped milking. They wouldn't survive anything like 'a generation'. While he didn't say 'days', the implication was most, if not all, would be dead within a short time.
As for the 'natural' case where an animal mammal's offspring dies, yet the mammal naturally 'dries up' and therefore survives, the situation it entirely different due to the volumes involved. It is a fact dairy cows are bred for very high yields. Those who call that abuse can delude themselves all they like but dairy cows are not the same as wild mammals. I've no time for animal abuse etc. but the idiots who, for example, 'rescue' pigs and keep them in flats are idiots.
Cow/goat/horse milk is obviously similar to human milk. Often children well past babyhood are breast fed. Adults must have tried it when food was is short supply in the winter and they didn't want to kill their precious animals for meat. People with a mutation that allowed them to process lactose would leave more offspring.
Do you really think that if some other animal species had been clever enough, and big enough to develop a vaccine then they wouldn't be testing it on us ? Surely you've been reading these posts about dead OAP's being eaten by their cats, starting with the eyeballs ?
All these finer feelings are simply a consequence of a bourgeois Western lifestyle which we Europeans have only been able to adopt as result of exploiting our fellow humans. If you were an illiterate peasant living in a mud hut in England up until the 17th century - not everyone's ancestors lived in thatched cottages with spinning wheels by the hearth, then you'd have been grateful of any odd scraps of meat you were given by your landlord or his agent - maybe the odd pig's head or trotters for Christmas if you'd paid your rent on time. And if you didn't your wife and kids certainly would have been, unless you were willing to condemn them to another year of eating little more than boiled turnips.
Basically for Westerners, unlike Hindus for whom it has always been their religion, vegetarianism and veganism are simply a status symbol for people who could now afford to adopt alternative lifestyles without starving. Much more today admittedly than in the past. But even then it was mainly the preserve of middle class types teachers, doctors, writers etc. who made a comfortable living but were uneasily aware of the fact that their lifestyle if only indirectly was the result of colonial exploitation. And so vegetarianism was a method of silent protest.
In short, in this world it costs money to have a conscience. But then where did that money come from in the first place ? Marxism 101
But I don't think anyone in their right mind, or even here <g> would just open the paddock gate on a dairy herd and send them on their way.
What you might do, if that was the final goal would be to get all the milkers in calf but leave them with their mums, only milking the surplus from any that were required.
Once the milk levels had dropped back to the right amount to feed their young (assuming that would happen etc), the cows, calves and a bull could be *relocated* somewhere where the natural habitat might stand a chance of supporting them long term. If that isn't viable you would have to just slaughter the entire herd (as would happen at ~5 years old anyway).
Bred and injected with chemicals, and have their young taken away and mechanically milked to keep it so.
Of course it's abuse. How else would you consider taking the young of a mammal away from it's mother well before it's weaned, wild or otherwise? [1]
If a human mothers has more children (at once) than she can cope with ... and if it's decided (by all parties) that the 'best thing' for both mother and child is to offer said child up for adoption, at least the mother has had a say in the matter, even if it's no less heartbreaking.
Then may I suggest you take a trip round your local dairy and look, hear and smell for yourself just how 'kind' the whole process is?
On the one we visited recently had signs beside the footpath as you walked towards it to keep the kids entertained. One said, 'Can you hear the calves mooing'? If we could translate those moos, what do you think they would be saying?
Abuse isn't reserved solely to any physical action.
Whilst I agree that isn't the same as the pig running around in the wild, they say pigs are similar in intelligence to dogs and so I see no reason, given the right circumstances / conditions, having a pet pig could be good for both pet and owner (I agree 'a flat' may not be ideal, even if the pig had regular access to a large outside area etc).
Cheers, T i m
[1] We currently take turn looking after daughters 'rescue' dog. We have him when she's at work, she has him when she's not.
Even though we are his second tier guardians, if we are out together (me, Mrs, dog) and we become separated by much, he doesn't like it, going as far as stopping dead and not moving until the 'missing' person catches up.
You don't really seem to get the concept of a discussion do you Brian, especially when you don't actually have any answers or none that can support your particular POV?
I would assume (without looking it up), any of this simply depends on how the 'thing' got to the position where you can use it.
If a natural sponge dies and washes up on the beach and you can make use of it then fine. If you fish / hunt / trap it, kill it or strip it of something that it wouldn't shed naturally, then it's not ok.
So, wool sheep are bred by us to produce a disproportionately large amounts of wool and so may not survive in the wild because of that 'unnatural' mutation.
Same with the damage we do to dogs when bred with for example, very short noses and then they have breathing problems.
Natural selection has been sorting that out perfectly well for millions of years, till we come along and interfere with it. ;-(
'Planet of the Apes' wasn't a documentary you know. ;-)
Yes but not sure of your point? Are you saying that many animals will eat whatever is available to allow them to survive if they have to? <shrug>
Partly.
No! ;-)
Sorry, yes, and ... ?
Ok .. ?
BS.
You need to get out more.
Or, it's what you believe to be right and so do what you can, as with our daughter and us. WeDGAF what you or anyone else thinks of our lifestyle choice.
It also costs resources that some people don't have.
Like, if you had a piece of fertile land (good enough to grow food for a dairy cow) but little water, would you be willing to invest 1,000 gallons of water to yield 1 gallon of milk?
(I think people dive for sponges and they are already dead. Does anyone know why sponges are so expensive and hard to obtain in this country? I went to Greece a few years ago and bought a few, cheaply. Boots here sells you a minute one, just about big enough for a baby, for £12.)
So how comes you've get this piece of fertile land all of a sudden ?
If this fertile land is so fertile then how comes humans haven't already populated this particular area, and there hasn't already been a scrabble for all the fertile land ?
How come you've got a piece of fertile land and possibly other people haven't ?
That would depend on how much all the people who don't have their own fertile land, for some reason you quite possibly don't wish to discuss, would be willing to pay you for milk.
That's how the real world work.
No rulers. Just people with fertile land it seems, who are able to charge people without fertile land for stuff they can't grow themselves. Then when the people without fertile land start revolting, people with fertile land like yourself start organising yourselves using the skills you already showed in getting your land, into towns, cities, and eventually states. Deciding or fighting amongst yourselves as to who was in charge.
They are classed as animals, they reproduce, they predate on other things, so unless they died of natural causes and given there are synthetic alternatives, I'd leave them alone?
"Early Europeans used soft sponges for many purposes, including padding for helmets, portable drinking utensils and municipal water filters. Until the invention of synthetic sponges, they were used as cleaning tools, applicators for paints and ceramic glazes and discreet contraceptives. However, by the mid-20th century, over-fishing brought both the animals and the industry close to extinction.[108] See also sponge diving."
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See above?
I guess different countries / cultures have different attitudes towards animals.
As I said previously your conscience in respect of animals is simply something other people simply cannot afford. Its a luxury good, not something for fortunate people to in any way feel self-righteous about.
Not that I'd ever accuse anyone of being self righteous, just as I wouldn't accuse people who insisted on asking awkward questions of being on drugs or deranged.
I think they are mostly filter feeders. They don't have a nervous system, and so might as well be regarded as plants from an ethical POV. Synthetic sponges are scratchy.
The ancient Romans used a sponge on a stick to wipe their bums. I think they used moss if sponge wasn't available such as in Britain.
No. They are light, and perhaps could be could be compressed for transportation.
I doubt many would object to using sponges for ethical reasons as few would be aware of their taxonomy.
I would have thought that would result in an increase in supply to meet the demand.
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