*(Calves crying)*
*Crying*
*(Calves crying)*
*Moos*
*Moans*
Aw... :(
*Cries*
So behind me just over my shoulder here is a dairy farm.
This dairy farm actually supplies dairy products for Cadbury's.
Now, it is absolutely freezing here, possibly the coldest day of the winter so far. It's 2 degrees currently,
and there was ice all over the hutches, there was ice down by the sides.
Some of the workers said that the water pipes had frozen over during the night.
Some of those animals were nearly a day and a half old.
They should still be suckling from their mother,
they should still be seeking warmth and comfort from their mother.
But instead, they're in his hutches.
Just put that into perspective for a second; these are babies just born. A lot of these were born in the week.
And they've been taken away from the mothers already, put into solitary confinement pens,
left in the freezing cold, icy weather...
That is absolutely horrendous! But it's the reality of dairy products.
The calves would not stop suckling the bars. In fact, one of them was suckling my fingers,
and the reason for this is because they're supposed to be suckling from their mother's udders.
They're supposed to be feeding from their mothers.
It's so instinctual for them because they need to do it to survive in the wild.
But because they've been taken away from their mothers,
they're left with this desire to suckle, but they don't know what they're doing, so their suckling on the bars,
they're suckling on people's fingers. They're suckling all these things just to try and find the comfort
that they would get from their mother, from feeding from their mother.
And the one calf that was suckling my finger became more and more distressed and more and more frantic
as she realized that she couldn't get the milk that she thought she would get from suckling.
People think there's no suffering in the dairy industry, that the animals don't suffer.
All dairy cows in the industry end up dead.
But apart from that, babies taken from their mothers, left in the freezing cold, icy weather.
The reason they're suckling the bars is because consumers buy the milk that is meant for them.
The milk that cows produced is meant for their children, NOT for humans.
So when we take milk from a dairy cow, that means that there is a baby who is not allowed that milk,
who is taken from their mother.
All the calves in the hutches behind me, the ones that we just saw, are female calves;
meaning they will be raised and put into the dairy industry themselves.
They will be forcibly impregnated,
they will have their babies taken away from them,
they'll be hooked up to machines that cause infections like mastitis, painful bacterial infections,
And eventually when they're no longer fit to produce milk or fit to breed and produce more babies,
they'll be taken to the slaughterhouse.
Their fate will be the same as their mothers': years of enslavement before finally being killed.
All because we like the taste of cheese, milk, and yogurt, and dairy products.
There are vegan alternatives; there are vegan substitutes.
There is no moral justification for allowing this kind of atrocity to continue.
It is time that we woke up, took moral responsibility for the action that we make,
and realize that these animals suffer.
They feel pain, they want to live, and they should be allowed to live.
No dairy product,
no animal product, is worth the amount of suffering that it causes to these living, sentient beings.
*Calves crying*