My family took care of a small herd of dairy goats when I was growing up. They could definitely make their displeasure known if you tried to make them do something they didn’t want to (especially when they were very nearly your own weight). Milking time? Most days they were perfectly happy to jump up on the stand for us to relieve their udders for them, sometimes even before we’d gotten everything set up.
I am careful where I get my milk from because the big dairy institutions are rather problematic. And I agree that the broad disempowerment and incarceration inherent in farming is an issue on its own. But saying that milk is always, unequivocally, unwanted theft (and respectively that farms provide an unqualified worse life) is just the other side of the same human-exceptionalism coin – you’re removing their agency to say “yes”.
Ah, good to know you have a argument ready to allow you to move the goalposts, and that you won’t accept any solutions for achieving utopia that don’t come out of the gate already perfect.
To be equally blunt, my response wasn’t “all eight billion people should drink small-farm milk”, it was “you’re being anthropocentric in a very similar vein to saying all other animals are automata.” If you really do think humans are the only species which can have and express desires and dislikes, then enjoy your biological essentialism.
That’s not a justification for stealing the milk. It’s not yours.
My family took care of a small herd of dairy goats when I was growing up. They could definitely make their displeasure known if you tried to make them do something they didn’t want to (especially when they were very nearly your own weight). Milking time? Most days they were perfectly happy to jump up on the stand for us to relieve their udders for them, sometimes even before we’d gotten everything set up.
I am careful where I get my milk from because the big dairy institutions are rather problematic. And I agree that the broad disempowerment and incarceration inherent in farming is an issue on its own. But saying that milk is always, unequivocally, unwanted theft (and respectively that farms provide an unqualified worse life) is just the other side of the same human-exceptionalism coin – you’re removing their agency to say “yes”.
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There’s no sustainable way to do this for 8 billion people, so frankly I don’t give a shit.
Ah, good to know you have a argument ready to allow you to move the goalposts, and that you won’t accept any solutions for achieving utopia that don’t come out of the gate already perfect.
To be equally blunt, my response wasn’t “all eight billion people should drink small-farm milk”, it was “you’re being anthropocentric in a very similar vein to saying all other animals are automata.” If you really do think humans are the only species which can have and express desires and dislikes, then enjoy your biological essentialism.
re: @[email protected]
I believe in verbal consent and think your argument is uncomfortably similar to rape apologia - you can just tell she wants it!
Weren’t these species selectively bred to have excess milk for us?
Cows don’t have a concept of property.
Cows have to be tricked into letting their milk down. They won’t let you steal it otherwise.
Do you have a source for that or are you just guessing because it’s a cow?
I don’t need to guess. Because it’s a cow.